So today the MP's of our country have announced they are to get a 1.5% pay rise. In the new Labour way, this has been decided by one of those 'independent' Quango's. To go with MP's, Doctors and Dentists are also getting 1.5%.
Hands up in the private sector anyone who got 1.5% last year or expects to get anything this year? Hmm, thought not.
Personally, not inclduing when I change jobs, I have had 3 payrises in 14 years ( OK, I have learned of the need to change job alot to compensate!).
But really with the country needing to slash at least 10% off it spending over the next two years, this is a disgrace.
It's a typical charade for the Labour Ministers, shortly to be slung out of power in all likelihood, saying they won't take a payrise they will never see; but also to award Doctors and Dentists, two professions who pay has skyrocketed over the Labour years is just insane. See this article on Doctors pay in Scotland increasing 38% over the past 3 years alone. Look at the very enlightening market oracle graph!
Chalk up another scorched earth policy designed to bring the IMF in to run the country ever more quickly.
26 comments:
1.5% is the lowest MP rise in living memory. Winterton will probably organise a strike!
When my pay is next reviewed in October it won't have increased for two years. Inflation has not been zero over that period.
A small pay cut for GPs would be very popular as well. After the shortage of applicants for GP posts in the past, it is now one of the most popular medical career paths. I wonder why??
I put this to my GP once when he was whingeing about me smoking - i.e. that he wasn't badly paid to sort out any health problems that ensued.
He just kind of grinned sheepishly at me. He's also an oil bear.
Paul Ormerod in an article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday claims UK public sector pay is 15% above private sector BEFORE taking into account public sector pensions.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704625004575089402883025676.html
apparently my local mp turned this and last years rises down.
"safe" lab seat so perhaps a bit more meaningful a gesture?
does anyone know who is on the quango? MPs partners?!
I can remember a pre-credit crunch salary freeze twenty odd years ago working for a mega bank. However we still received (admittedly small) bonuses. (Indeed even that long ago a secretary with salary and bonus got as much as an MP's salary today).
@royM - They keep it quite hidden, here is the link to their site.
http://www.ome.uk.com/About_Us.aspx
The senior salaries bit is led by Keith Masson and the chairman is Bill Cockburn.
read the report, the 1.5% is quite misleading as teachers and nurses get much more as do generals and admirals.
Don't jump on to the GP pay bandwagon. Only GP partners get paid that sort of money. Salaried GP's which are becoming the norm with darzi centres etc only get about GBP65,000. Not to be sniffed at but not the figures loved by the daily mail.
Mark
I'm so glad that I'm self employed. If I want a pay rise I don't have to work to rule or go on strike, I have to do the exact opposite - work a bit more or a bit harder.
This is one of the (many) reasons I could never be a socialist. I've got self respect.
Mark J - sorry, I am on this bandwagon as far as public spending is concerned. UK GP's earn far more than their Euroepan equivalents, only US doctors earn more relatively.
I am not advocating pay cuts, just restraint to make up for the years of feasting.
GPs are far more deserving of their pay than those people in the City earning millions for shoving other people's money around perhaps at best to very little effect and at worst to disaster.
Anon at 10:10.. I shove my own money around, often to little effect and sometimes to near disaster - let me assure you that it's not as easy as it sounds!! :-)
Pogo
My insight is partly based on my own experience in investment banking.
The level of self-delusion on this blog continues unabated I see.
You really imagine that MPs are overpaid - in a period when we've all been robbed blind by your mates in the city.
If MPs were paid as much as middle managers in financial services and they had a fraction of the money that this industry has to soften up their political rivals, we wouldn't be in the mess that we're in now.
The level of self-delusion by statists like Paulie continues unabated I see.
Neither bankers nor any other workers make the rules, governments do. If you don't like the outcomes - change the rules.
Unfortunately Brown (and Blair) did just that, and look where it has got us. I am no Tory supporter but if socialists had stuck to the Tory financial rules, we wouldn't be in the mess that we're in now.
Budgie
A plague on both their houses. The politicians and the regulators screwed up mightily. But the bankers were far too greedy and lacked prudence. And they are still laughing all the way to the bank despite the damage they wrought.
It's all like listening to some hippy social worker saying 'it's all society's fault' when one of their charges gets caught pilfering.
Except its not pilfering in this case, it's grand larceny.
That's why - when you run a site called capitalists@work you really have to obsess about how awful MPs are. It's like a magician's misdirection to an audience.
A final thought, if we had no NHS, I am sure GPs would earn even more than they do in the NHS today.
Yes, Paulie, it is like "some hippy social worker saying 'it's all society's fault' rather than admitting blame. That is exactly what Brown and socialist tribalists like yourself have done: "it wasnae me", "it's the wicked bankers", "it's the Tory toffs", etc etc.
Problem is, for you and other statists, Brown was in charge for 13 years. These things happened on his watch, under rules he made. Worse than the bankers though, is Brown's debt which will impoverish us for decades.
£1.5 trillion debt (and it's probably more) means repayment (at 5%) of £120 billion, or 8% of GDP, per year for 20 years. Brown's bust has wiped out just 6.2% of GDP (ONS figure) in two years. So Brown's debt is 30% worse than the current recession, each year, for 10 times longer than this recession.
Then there are all the other failures: pensions, manufacturing, civil liberties, electricity generation, gold sales, immigration, youth unemployment, Lisbon, etc. Not even Labour in the 1970s was this bad.
I'm getting a decent pay rise but it's come at a price.
Our conditions of service have been massacreeeed. I suppose this is how it starts. Errosion of conditions to achieve pay rises which are soon eaten away by inflation.
I agree with other contributors here: doctors' and MPs' pay is nothing like as excessive as in banking. It transpires that a banking career is a risk free proposition with a state funded safety net - and without the prospect of being banged up inside for making an elementary numerical mistake like doctors can be.
Yes. Without the NHS doctors' pay would be higher - but there would be fewer of them.
I'm sorry I cant agree that GP's are necesarily more worthy than bankers. A group that was bought off by Labour at the foundation of the NHS and has subsequently vigourously employs shroud waving at any threat to their own cash cow. Add to that a gneeral pompous self delusion and the misplaced public view that like nurses they are 'good' and 'virtuous', I certainly dont see doctors as any more worthy than anyone else.
As to the drivel that Paulie and his ilk are on about - no it's Labour's f*ckwittery that has structurally indermined us. And no we shouldnt have bailed out the banks - real caitalism please not your social democratic neo-fascist corporate state.
Liking this debate. Paulei, where to start. I do think perhaps MP's might have thought a little about a pay rise when they just cgot cuaght with their hands in the till.
As to doctors being more worthy than bankers. This is tiresome, footballers get paid more than bankers, as do airhead TV presenters and catwalk models. Where does this debate go?
I hate seeing reward for failure, which is why MP's should not get a payrise. Doctors were awarded payrises for no good reason.
Finally, re the NHS and doctors earning less, I am not sure i gree,, monopolies have a good economic record of eeking out the best rewards for their staff; one good reason to break them up (No, I am not advocating getting rid of the NHS).
CityUnslicker
Re monopolies, I guess that is why doctors in the US earn so little and why the captains of nationalised industries saw their reward packages crash to the ground following privatisation. Not. And then of course there are the part state owned banks whose performamnce was such a glorious advert for capitalism.
Monopolies can be public and private sector - the issue is market abuse - both you examples are valid for this.
nothing in this article is about public sector bad private sector good - it is on rewarding failure which is a bad thing wherever it is taking place.
Doctors in the US pay for their own education, they earn alot but start $400,000 in debt - a very different system to ours.
I thought you might remark that monopolies can be private and public and was going to pre-empt the point by noting that the higher packages applied not only to post-privatisation private monopolies but also to their fragmented descendants. As for GPs thing, you cannot seriously believe GPs operating in a fully privatised industry would earn less than they do in the public sector. As a former City boy, and fan of the free market, I think your site is great. But on this point you are wrong.
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