From the Daily Mirror I thought this was pretty funny and worth a read, even if it has lost its topicality now.
Dear MPs,
How are you? What’s it like up there? I do hope the cuckoos and clouds aren’t bothering you too much.
Down here on Planet Earth things are a bit different. Everyone has less money than they used to, will be working for longer, and all our services – health, schools, roads, councils – are being cut back.
It’s generally accepted that we are, in fact, on our arse.
This would be offset, very slightly, by a reduction in the golden goodbyes you get when booted out of office so they are in line with what mortals receive, a downgrading of your platinum-coated pension scheme and stricter rules about free dinners.
You remember, that time when you all looked really bad.
Now, the Prime Minister says the pay rise is ‘unthinkable’, Nick Clegg says he won’t accept it, and Ed Miliband says it should be no more than 1%.
Funnily enough none of them have called for a vote on the issue, or ordered their MPs to refuse it.
As your employer, it falls to us to decide your pay. Allow me to explain our thinking:
* You would merit a similar 1% pay rise if you were doing a good job of steering the ship of state through choppy waters. Instead you behave like a bunch of argumentative teenaged drunks with the munchies driving a clown car through a minefield, while ignoring the 62million people on board all screaming at you to stop.
On top of this you have such a reputation for corruption and venality that only 65% of us could be bothered to not really vote for anyone at the last election.
* Everyone else who has to work after 7.30pm buys their own sandwiches. You can do the same.
* To claim that losing automatic payments of up to £65,000 is a cutback is somewhat cheeky, seeing as it is merely being cut back from ‘excessively disgusting’ to ‘standard for everyone else who loses their job’.
* Furthermore, with a pension scheme that has 29% contributions from the taxpayer compared to 14% for the rest of the public sector, it can probably stand a little trimming without losing any of its soft and privileged belly fat.
* Many of you moonlight. This is not on.
All in all your performance is not what it could be, and you are subject to a personnel appraisal just once every five years. No matter how appalling you are at your job, you generally lose it only if your line manager is more unpopular than the other line managers.
In short you have a fairly cushy job and to complain you might lose the associated free dinners is, frankly, insulting.
There is an argument that we would have better politicians if we paid you more. Seeing as enriching you by means of an enormous salary, generous pension and a free house has not achieved this, it is difficult to see how extra cash would help.
We do however need politicians, so here are a few suggestions for your future pay and conditions which, if agreed, could bring you year-on-year salary increases.
* Sleep in a dormitory like every other public servant who has to live away from home. You expect the military, nurses, doctors and care workers to do the same; perhaps if you have to endure state housing you would ensure it wasn’t a death trap. We’d call yours The Ivory Tower.
*A salary, pension and redundancy package which is precisely the same as the national average. If you want this to improve, you will need to raise the national standard of living which is what we voted you in to do in the first place.
* Commit to a yearly public meeting with your constituents, open primaries so that anyone of merit can be selected as a party candidate without the need for financial backing from their own pockets or those of a union, and give voters the power to recall MPs when they have been disgraced. This would finally end the outrage of a politician being booted, resigning or losing the whip but clinging on to their MPs’ perks for years to protect their party from a by-election. Patrick Mercer, Tom Watson, Mike Hancock , I am looking at you.
* You would be expected to work for a rise in voter turnout, have holidays reduced to six weeks a year, take on no other employment, and spend one day a month doing community work in your constituency in order to keep your feet on the ground. Food bank, picking up litter, teaching assistant – we don’t care what, so long as you talk to actual human beings whose lives are different to yours.
Of course like every other public servant if you do not accept your employers’ pay offer you have the right to either go on strike or seek better-paid work in the private sector.
Still, with a skill set which includes avoidance, evasion, immorality, blatant criminality, and hypocrisy there should be a role for you in the financial industry.
Otherwise, there is a strong chance of a lynch mob marching on Parliament armed to the teeth with rotten vegetables if you continue on your present course of snuffling right down to the bottom of the trough.
Yours sincerely,
Foxy
