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By what measure is 65k a small amount of money, from what i remember the average wage in the uk is ~26k, and many full time workers earn much less than this.


I didn't say it was small. It's certainly small for what an MP/PM entails. Even a middle manager in some average company would expect to be on £65k.

So there is a massive disconnect between what members of parliament get paid, and what they would get if they moved into the private sector business world. The issue is that voters as you say, are on average paid a lot less, so they don't understand this point.

Personally, I'd like to see the PM paid £1m or so. MPs maybe £250k. I would expect them to be less corruptable and more focussed.


I'm unaware that the wage for a PM is the main motivating interest for most, in this case David Cameron being I assume at least moderately wealthy, the comparison is flawed I feel.

I don't agree that paying MPs more would create an environment for less corruption, I have so far seen little restraint in human greed, and even those at the very top of the pay scale are not above eking more out of the system.

What would help with corruption, would be a more open lobbying system, restrictions on the jobs MPs can take after leaving parliament and ensuring members of the cabinet cannot be employed when they have obvious biases, a former oil company head being minister for energy for example.

Also as is obviously the case in many industries, Health and Social Care being one, the private sector model does not always make sense.


I disagree. It's the same with teaching. Why become a teacher of X and get paid Y, when you can just become a professional X and get paid 2Y?

I'm in no way saying the private model always makes sense. What I'm saying is that the reason we perhaps have poor choice of MPs, is because all the people who would make great MPs are earning a decent wage in the private business world.


Because the average person isn't going to be fit to be a PM. The amount of responsibility that a PM entails is more than what would be required as CEO of most smaller companies, yet they would make a lot more.




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