[Livia]

Originally Posted by Omah

Exactly .....

The Tories are printing and borrowing billions in order to line the pockets of the bankers and businessmen - when one of that lot retires, they have millions salted away, they get a massive golden handshake, an enormous pension, a huge share option and highly-lucrative but non-executive seats on various boards of directors .....

What exactly IS the pay and pension of a constituency MP? I don't mean the PM or the Chancellor, I mean an ordinary, hard-working MP of any party. You don't know, do you. It's much less than middle-management would get in the private sector. For instance. my MP local earns less than one third of what the leader of the local council gets, and less than half the pension pot. Yes they get expenses but only a handful of them exploited it and most didn't claim one penny that they weren't, not just legally, but morally entitled to. Ordinary constituency MPs have regular surgeries with their constituents, helping them sort out a range of problems - benefits, housing, social problems, immigration, custody and maintenance... all sorts of stuff. Most MPs are totally in touch with what's happening in the real world. But people don't really want to hear about them. They want to concentrate on the myth that they're all living high on the hog and they lump them all in together.

All anyone ever sees is the handful of MPs who make the news, usually for something negative. No one hears about the good stuff that the ordinary back-benchers do... because if they are bad at their job they are likely to lose it at the next election. If you ever need the help of your MP you'll see what I mean.