Former Conservative chairman Baroness Warsi says her party will not win the next election unless it does more to attract ethnic minority voters.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28730274

A Foreign Office minister who resigned on Monday has blamed "intolerable" expenses rules for forcing him to choose between his family and his parliamentary career ...

... He said that the rental allowance of £27,875 a year plus £2,500 for each of his three children would not be enough to maintain a family home in Westminster and that he would not be prepared to live outside central London.

Simmonds earns £89,435 a year as an MP and minister and employs his wife Lizbeth with up to £25,000 of public money ...

... Last year, Simmonds was named by his local paper as the most expensive MP in Lincolnshire after it was calculated that he had claimed £173,436.96 in expenses for 2013.

chairman bill wrote:It's obviously a good job that nobody has to work as a nurse, or a teacher, or a hotel cleaner, or tube driver, or any of a thousand other jobs that people don't have to do in London, isn't it? I mean, how would they ever afford to live anywhere near where they live?

Evolving wrote:

Strontium Dog wrote:
For starters, I'd wager most of those people don't need to maintain two homes.

For another, I'd wager most of them don't routinely need to work until the early hours of the morning.

That's true (though some of them do have quite unsociable hours).

Strontium Dog wrote:

The guy just wants to spend more time with his family, and he can't do that as an MP, because he's not paid enough for them to live with him in Westminster. Nothing dishonourable about that. It seems commendably honest to me.

Strontium Dog wrote:

chairman bill wrote:It's obviously a good job that nobody has to work as a nurse, or a teacher, or a hotel cleaner, or tube driver, or any of a thousand other jobs that people don't have to do in London, isn't it? I mean, how would they ever afford to live anywhere near where they live?

For starters, I'd wager most of those people don't need to maintain two homes.

For another, I'd wager most of them don't routinely need to work until the early hours of the morning.

The guy just wants to spend more time with his family, and he can't do that as an MP, because he's not paid enough for them to live with him in Westminster. Nothing dishonourable about that. It seems commendably honest to me.

Strontium Dog wrote:

chairman bill wrote:It's obviously a good job that nobody has to work as a nurse, or a teacher, or a hotel cleaner, or tube driver, or any of a thousand other jobs that people don't have to do in London, isn't it? I mean, how would they ever afford to live anywhere near where they live?

For starters, I'd wager most of those people don't need to maintain two homes.

For another, I'd wager most of them don't routinely need to work until the early hours of the morning.

The guy just wants to spend more time with his family, and he can't do that as an MP, because he's not paid enough for them to live with him in Westminster. Nothing dishonourable about that. It seems commendably honest to me.

He said that the rental allowance of £27,875 a year plus £2,500 for each of his three children would not be enough to maintain a family home in Westminster and that he would not be prepared to live outside central London.

Simmonds earns £89,435 a year as an MP and minister and employs his wife Lizbeth with up to £25,000 of public money.

chairman bill wrote:

Strontium Dog wrote:

chairman bill wrote:It's obviously a good job that nobody has to work as a nurse, or a teacher, or a hotel cleaner, or tube driver, or any of a thousand other jobs that people don't have to do in London, isn't it? I mean, how would they ever afford to live anywhere near where they live?

For starters, I'd wager most of those people don't need to maintain two homes.

For another, I'd wager most of them don't routinely need to work until the early hours of the morning.

The guy just wants to spend more time with his family, and he can't do that as an MP, because he's not paid enough for them to live with him in Westminster. Nothing dishonourable about that. It seems commendably honest to me.

Funny how other MPs manage it though, dontcha think?

My home is in Aviemore, about half an hour south of Inverness, the Highland capital and just a short distance from the Cairngorm Mountains.

Being MP for a Highland constituency involves a lot of traveling, both to and from London and within the constituency itself. Most weeks, I need to be in London during the week returning late at night on Thursday. That leaves me Friday and the weekend to fit in a busy round of local events, meetings and advice surgeries all over the area.

When Parliament is not sitting I am able to spend real time at home, and I try to get out and about as much as possible to make the most of it. I represent communities from Fort Augustus at the western end of Loch Ness, to Auldearn, east of Nairn, and from the Drumochter Pass to the Beauly Firth, so there is never a shortage of things to do!

I am fortunate to enjoy the work I do, and I have always had a particular interest in many of the issues I come across on a daily basis in the constituency – especially housing, transport for rural communities and protecting our environment. At Westminster, and in my work as a Minister, I am working to put Highland values of fairness and responsibility at the heart of Government policy for the whole UK.

Strontium Dog wrote:Oh, I already knew that you had precious little appreciation for what life in Westminster is like.