Friday 5 November 2021

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In today's Times, Sir Peter Bottomley is off again about the supposed need to pay MPs more. But there were 3,322 candidates at the last General Election, and there must have been tens of thousands of unsuccessful applicants for party nominations, so there is no shortage of people who want to be MPs.

MPs are already in the top three per cent of earners. Anyone who cannot live very well indeed on a basic salary of £81,932, never mind all the rest, is simply not a functioning adult. Yet such a person probably dares to accuse pensioners, and Universal Credit claimants many of whom are in full-time work, of "not budgeting properly" when they find themselves having to choose between heating and eating.

2 comments:

  1. "We can barely pay the school fees," apparently.

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    1. The fees for commercial schools are far beyond the reach of anyone in the middle of anything. You can go to school for free in this country, and most people do. But this needless expense makes very affluent people feel as if they are struggling, since they really do have to make certain sacrifices, by their own standards, in order to meet it. In turn, that makes them very vocal against, for example, a modest increase in their own direct taxation.

      But taxing school fees? They always dig out that one when they want to appear leftish for internal party purposes. There is never the slightest suggestion of doing it when they are in government, because it has to be kept in reserve.

      In any case, how would it be a good thing for the Left to force even more people to have to send their children to the schools that were the citadels of the Labour Right, the points at which the liberal elite met the municipal machine? What has either of those ever done for us? But they have done a hell of a lot to us.

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