MPs' pay rise an insult amid cost of living crisis - Yorkshire Post Letters

From: Jerry Diccox, Wilsden.
Picture: Getty.Picture: Getty.
Picture: Getty.

IT is hard to imagine anything more insulting to the public in the midst of a cost of living crisis than the news that MPs – including Boris Johnson, whose ongoing suitability for the post of PM has been called repeatedly into question by many – have been awarded a £2k pay increase.

The public already have the impression that MPs with their generous expenses, subsidised lifestyles and £84k salaries – not forgetting in many cases their privileged backgrounds and cushy second jobs – live in a cosseted world that has little in common with the people they claim to represent.

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Having recently discovered my own MP Philip Davies to be a man of extraordinary rudeness I would not want to see a penny more of public money going his way.

Calls to reform the body responsible for MPs’ pay, Ipsa, would of course be met by howls of objection from MPs, despite it being supposedly independent from them.

If the pay increase is in recognition of MPs’ additional workload pressure, then why can’t they be satisfied with a weekly round of doorstep applause? If they feel obliged to take the ill-deserved money, then the only decent course of action for Johnson, and his club of mickey-takers, would be to donate it charity.