How to Stop the MP 2nd Mortgage Problem

mr_goo

This really does not require much in the way of intelligent thinking. And was already brought up in conversation by a couple of mates. So here it is.

Westminster Campus:-

A large complex of apartments similar in concept to Students halls of residence. They would be 1,2 or 3 beds depending on requirements of each MP. They would be fully furnished to a reasonable standard, supplied with fully fitted kitchen with all mod cons. TV and internet access FOC. Any extras to be supplied by the MP at their own expense.

Laundry service would be available but this at the MPs own expense, otherwise they can use the washer/dryers supplied either in kitchen or the communal laundry.

There will also be a few cafeterias and restaurants on campus, as one would expect (perhaps some branded High Street Offerings who would have to pay for the construction etc etc). They would offer 24 hour service for our very busy public servants, as we cannot expect them to return back to their apartments after an all-nighter in the commons and expect them to heat something up in the microwave (also provided FOC).

Gymnasium, running track and swimming pool is also on site. Our MPs need to be in tip top physical condition for those busy select committees and meetings with the Belerussian trade commission.

Location of said Campus is obviously an issue. My thoughts are that it could be located on the Western outskirts of London. Where there is obviously more scope to develop this complex. It would have access back to city via M4/A4 or tube. Plus quick access to Heathrow. I also think that a shuttle bus service could be provided or maybe a fleet of cars to ferry MPs back and forth (British tax payer already contributes to fleet of limos for the unelected beaurocrats in Brussels).

This would be entirely funded by the tax payer. Not a problem, as after all we are funding their fraudulent expenses at the moment any how. It would be run by a publicly incorporated organisation and not by private enterprise. I have do desire for an MP to have any interest or possible financial advantage gained from the building or running of the establishment.
In essence the campus would be run similar to a large hotel. With reception / concierge and of course a robust security service (new division of Met).


I am sure some of you will find holes in the scheme. But try and think of a way to overcome them and see if this is a viable solution. If I get a favourable response on here I will put up a petition on the interweb.

rick_chasey

So how would MPs serve their local constituencies who they are elected to represent?

arran77

Rick Chasey wrote:

So how would MPs serve their local constituencies who they are elected to represent?

They'd still have their weekend piles in the country

my_grandadʹs_bike

Rick Chasey wrote:

So how would MPs serve their local constituencies who they are elected to represent?

By having a house in the constituency they serve with a mortgage that they pay for out of their own blooming wages just like the rest of us mugs.

Mr Goo's suggestion makes perfect sense and stops them trousering a massive profit at our expense when their local electorate see through them and decide to vote in another self serving careerist politician .

nathancom

They would be trying to screw and/or kill each other all the time.

I guess the cost capex and opex would be astronomical considering London and South East property prices compared to what expenses currently cost the nation.

my_grandadʹs_bike

nathancom wrote:

They would be trying to screw and/or kill each other all the time.

I guess the cost capex and opex would be astronomical considering London and South East property prices compared to what expenses currently cost the nation.

Initial capital cost would be high but then at least the state would own an asset
who's value should only increase.

nathancom

my grandad's bike wrote:

nathancom wrote:

They would be trying to screw and/or kill each other all the time.

I guess the cost capex and opex would be astronomical considering London and South East property prices compared to what expenses currently cost the nation.

Initial capital cost would be high but then at least the state would own an asset
who's value should only increase.

What is the ROI though?

Neat idea though and at least we would have a single target to hit come the revolution.

morstar

nathancom wrote:

my grandad's bike wrote:

nathancom wrote:

They would be trying to screw and/or kill each other all the time.

I guess the cost capex and opex would be astronomical considering London and South East property prices compared to what expenses currently cost the nation.

Initial capital cost would be high but then at least the state would own an asset
who's value should only increase.

What is the ROI though?

Neat idea though and at least we would have a single target to hit come the revolution.

I guess this is the real disadvantage of an otherwise great idea. Maybe a form of stock housing that didn't put the entire parliament in one location would work. Any MP who did not wish to use the stock housing could take the equivalent value in expenses and live somewhere more or less affordable as per their tastes by making up the difference themselves.
Anybody with a constituency within an hour and a half of London would be exempt. Think that's considered to be a reasonable commute if you're on the dole (but not certain).

VTech

I'm going to be flamed here but before you reply in anger I urge you to read what I have written and then wait for a few minutes for it to sink in.

Pay them more in the first place !

I'll explain.
An MP will earn £66k and when you look at this like a business, the salary is poor considering the position. This opens up the person to doing things that we would not consider "fit"
An equal position in a valuable company would be far higher than £66k and the reason for that is to keep the person totally focused on their position in order to achieve the best results for the company.
After all, you wouldn't want a CEO worrying about something as trivial as their mortgage, therefor taking their eye off the ball for the company.
What I am saying really makes total sense if you look at it at a grass routes level.

We all know why countries like brazil and other South American nations have so much violence and corruption, they pay their law enforcement personnel a pittance and so corruption is ever increasing.

Any member of a board of directors would confirm what I have written when looking for a new head of the company. You simply need their total commitment and to get that you need to remove as much of the outside influences as possible.
In the end you get so much more back that the extra salary is swallowed up many times over in cost savings.

team47b

VTech wrote:

I'm going to be flamed here but before you reply in anger I urge you to read what I have written and then wait for a few minutes for it to sink in.

Maybe just maybe you should read your opening gambit then wait a few minutes for it to slowly sink in just how patronising you are being, then not include inflammatory language if you don't want to get flamed :roll:

bdu98252

Maybe the question should be, "How to stop the public being petty to a group of state employees". I work as and engineer and quite frankly if I was expected to go from Cumbria to say London to work 5 days a week on a long terms say 4-5 year contract then I would not be accepting a position where I stayed in some form of shared accommodation like I was a student and did not have a pot to piss in.

I would expect a similar standard of living to my personal situation and that to be paid buy the employer or the client if I was a contractor. I would maybe like my family to be able to visit me so that I could have a reasonable quality of life without them squatting on the floor. How unreasonable I hear you ask.

People have to accept if you want democracy then what you get is the population sitting in on the interview and deciding which is the best candidate and then voting. Around two thirds will be disappointed that they did not either vote or get who they wanted and a third will be pleased.

The expenses system on the whole is broadly fair for the people travelling a long way such as Scotland, Wales, Northern England post reform. If MP's have made some money from leveraging themselves with second properties then this was their risk with only the interest paid by the tax payer. They could have ended in negative equity. I did the very same thing in Glasgow from 2000 to 2007 and made a tidy profit. Maybe I should be lynched too?

VTech

team47b wrote:

VTech wrote:

I'm going to be flamed here but before you reply in anger I urge you to read what I have written and then wait for a few minutes for it to sink in.

Maybe just maybe you should read your opening gambit then wait a few minutes for it to slowly sink in just how patronising you are being, then not include inflammatory language if you don't want to get flamed :roll:

Done exactly as you said, had a think and don't really wish to change anything, they should be paid more and I am confident that in return we would get better service.

mr_goo

VTech. They should not be paid more.
The whole problem with modern day politics is that it's no longer about conviction and all about career. Conviction of your beliefs is what the country needs to get back to. Perhaps by stopping various avenues of financial exploitation, and by providing FOC living costs in London, we might get a new generation of MPs not intent of financial gain, and some that really want to serve their communities and the country. A pipe dream?

bdu98252

The first thing on my list of people to manage the economy and country is conviction. The next question is what is their conviction about. Is it about doing the job for free and making a big deal out of how they have saved the tax payer a whopping 150k whilst the country is in ruins because you got the head of the local schools parents association on the job. It is probably a bit like putting someone with no education or track record of running a bank as the chief executive of COOP. That ended well.

The fundamental reason that the Bullingdon boys run the country is that anyone who wishes to better their personal circumstances is not interested in politics as they need to provide for their family first and foremost. It is easy to have principles and work for free when daddy is paying the bills.

team47b

VTech wrote:

team47b wrote:

VTech wrote:

I'm going to be flamed here but before you reply in anger I urge you to read what I have written and then wait for a few minutes for it to sink in.

Maybe just maybe you should read your opening gambit then wait a few minutes for it to slowly sink in just how patronising you are being, then not include inflammatory language if you don't want to get flamed :roll:

Done exactly as you said, had a think and don't really wish to change anything, they should be paid more and I am confident that in return we would get better service.

Are you being deliberately obtuse? I made no suggestion that you should reconsider your opinion only that you read and consider your first paragraph ie the one I quoted.

Patronising tone example...now go back and read again your first paragraph and don't come out of your bedroom until you realise what you have done...end of parental tone :roll:

VTech

bdu98252 wrote:

The first thing on my list of people to manage the economy and country is conviction. The next question is what is their conviction about. Is it about doing the job for free and making a big deal out of how they have saved the tax payer a whopping 150k whilst the country is in ruins because you got the head of the local schools parents association on the job. It is probably a bit like putting someone with no education or track record of running a bank as the chief executive of COOP. That ended well.

The fundamental reason that the Bullingdon boys run the country is that anyone who wishes to better their personal circumstances is not interested in politics as they need to provide for their family first and foremost. It is easy to have principles and work for free when daddy is paying the bills.

Exactly.

I actually don't think there is a fix for government, its the same the world over, I really do think corruption is inbred at almost all levels and there is a working policy of methods to claim more.
These, if possible would need to be removed and a fair wage paid which enables the people who would run the country to do so without any hassles on what they can or cannot afford.
As I stated above, you wouldn't get any decent CEO on an equivalent salary as a politician.

DeVlaeminck

I disagree with you Vtech that paying them more would necessarily mean they wouldn't be tempted to play their expenses system. For example the hedge fund manager in the news at the weekend for having to repay 42k in rail fares he had skipped by misusing an oyster card.

Many of the MPs who have been caught fiddling their expenses are not relying on their MPs income so paying them more is not a solution. That is not to say they shouldn't be paid more, I wouldn't object to a modest rise to say 80k which when you take into account other benefits seems reasonable to me, but that's a separate issue.

DeVlaeminck

bdu98252 wrote:

The fundamental reason that the Bullingdon boys run the country is that anyone who wishes to better their personal circumstances is not interested in politics as they need to provide for their family first and foremost. It is easy to have principles and work for free when daddy is paying the bills.

Really? As the average wage is under 30k a year an MPs salary and associated benefits would very much count as bettering themselves financially for the vast majority. Just because some positions in our society are massively over paid does not mean every other job that requires an education can be bumped up to their level. Frankly there is no shortage of well qualified people who would like to be an MP - what we need less of are people who want to do the job for personal gain - paying a huge amount more would only draw in more career politicians and fewer people who see it as a chance to serve others.

mr_goo

Vtech. The argument of CEOs being paid much more holds no water in the argument about MP salaries. If someone wants to be a captain of industry or CEO of a financial institution then that is the career they should follow. I think there are far too many MPs that have come up through the Graduation/Researcher/Safe Seat = Career in Politics route. As can been seen from many of the current administration, opposition and previous labour government, they are not in it for the good of the country.

I do agree that corruption in politics will be impossible to stamp out. However this second mortgage business is madness. Why should the tax payer fund the cost of an MPs house in London. Then when the MP retires or is removed from seat and they subsequently sell the property they come out with a profit (in general) at our expense.

bdu98252

Lets run an experiment. Given there are a large number of people on the dole at the minute lets put them all on an election ballet paper and vote for the top 600 and replace the current institution. Lets go further and punitively remove all our civil servants and repeat the process for them. We can then reduce the wage for and MP down to the minimum wage and no one will know how to run anything.

Lets face it most of the current individuals are well qualified and could probably get a job elsewhere so they are merely cluttering up the place and preventing good honest hard workers from succeeding in life.

Anyone know how this experiment ends? It is the general public's view towards politics that give us the politics we deserve. The view is that you hate these guys because they earn more than you and they do a job that anyone could do that is driving the debate. Lets put your money where your mouth is and go with being governed by the least capable.

mr_goo

bdu98252 wrote:

Lets run an experiment. Given there are a large number of people on the dole at the minute lets put them all on an election ballet paper and vote for the top 600 and replace the current institution. Lets go further and punitively remove all our civil servants and repeat the process for them. We can then reduce the wage for and MP down to the minimum wage and no one will know how to run anything.

Lets face it most of the current individuals are well qualified and could probably get a job elsewhere so they are merely cluttering up the place and preventing good honest hard workers from succeeding in life.

Anyone know how this experiment ends? It is the general public's view towards politics that give us the politics we deserve. The view is that you hate these guys because they earn more than you and they do a job that anyone could do that is driving the debate. Lets put your money where your mouth is and go with being governed by the least capable.

My OP is straying right off topic now. The debate is really about whether a campus to house MPs or multiple smaller establishments would be the best foot forward in stopping the 2nd mortgage issues. Plus it would stop the profiteering off tax payers money once the property is sold.

markhewitt1978

You don't need to go to all the complications of building an MP campus with facilities etc. You 'solution' is simply not to permit paying of mortgages full stop. If the MP lives outside London they will be allocated a rented apartment or flat in London, the value of which commensurate with their position. The key is that they won't be allowed to pay the rent themselves, it will be rented on their behalf by the government, it may well be that the flat is government or privately owned, but in reality it won't matter.

Of course if they get voted out or fired from being a minister they'd have to move out.

Just a simple change to outlawing the paying of mortgages stops it all at a stroke.

bianchimoon

The problem is, there are a proportion of fundamentally dishonest MP's who do or have been prepared to get lie and cheat to get more than they're due out of the current system. Paying them more money will not make these people more honest.
If making an extra buck is that important to them they will find ways within the parliamentary system to do it ala cash for questions. Or short career politicians such as Blair, Mendelson etc. make a name for yourself, get as many contacts as possible and ship out to make a boatload from the contact cultivating you've been doing while in office rather than serving the public... rant over

VTech

Mr Goo wrote:

Vtech. The argument of CEOs being paid much more holds no water in the argument about MP salaries. If someone wants to be a captain of industry or CEO of a financial institution then that is the career they should follow. I think there are far too many MPs that have come up through the Graduation/Researcher/Safe Seat = Career in Politics route. As can been seen from many of the current administration, opposition and previous labour government, they are not in it for the good of the country.

I do agree that corruption in politics will be impossible to stamp out. However this second mortgage business is madness. Why should the tax payer fund the cost of an MPs house in London. Then when the MP retires or is removed from seat and they subsequently sell the property they come out with a profit (in general) at our expense.

I agree that we need to clamp down on expenses.
I have to work from a list of HMRC allowances when booking hotels and travel and they say that a night in Miami rates at around £75 yet an MP can claim £210 for a night in Brighton.
I am rated at £16 for an evening meal inclusive of drinks yet an MP has no limit.

I actually think that many are no less than criminal and my statements earlier were based solely on getting someone in the private sector to do the job required of an MP in the public sector. It simply wouldn't happen.

verylonglegs

I would have thought the banking crisis has unequivocally proven that paying someone high wages doesn't mean you get high performance. Corruption is a cultural issue, using low wages as an excuse for having no integrity is a false argument.

bianchimoon

verylonglegs wrote:

I would have thought the banking crisis has unequivocally proven that paying someone high wages doesn't mean you get high performance. Corruption is a cultural issue, using low wages as an excuse for having no integrity is a false argument.

well said

DeVlaeminck

bdu98252 wrote:

Lets run an experiment. Given there are a large number of people on the dole at the minute lets put them all on an election ballet paper and vote for the top 600 and replace the current institution. Lets go further and punitively remove all our civil servants and repeat the process for them. We can then reduce the wage for and MP down to the minimum wage and no one will know how to run anything.

Lets face it most of the current individuals are well qualified and could probably get a job elsewhere so they are merely cluttering up the place and preventing good honest hard workers from succeeding in life.

Anyone know how this experiment ends? It is the general public's view towards politics that give us the politics we deserve. The view is that you hate these guys because they earn more than you and they do a job that anyone could do that is driving the debate. Lets put your money where your mouth is and go with being governed by the least capable.

Give that straw man a kick from me too will ya.

VTech

bianchimoon wrote:

verylonglegs wrote:

I would have thought the banking crisis has unequivocally proven that paying someone high wages doesn't mean you get high performance. Corruption is a cultural issue, using low wages as an excuse for having no integrity is a false argument.

well said

Not really. To get the best you need to pay the right salary. You won't get top execs taking an 80% pay cut to become a politician. I am not saying this will end corruption, we all know money breads this illness.

4kicks

have you even READ the post verylonglegs made? If you have, then you haven't understood it.

"To get the best you need to pay the right salary " is kind of like answering "why are you such an ADD addled, sub-darwinian, outlier? " with "chicken, please".

Simple. More money for MPs does not equal less corruption as integrity doesn't have a price.

verylonglegs

I'm not sure why you see business executives and politcians as the same thing anyway? It's not an association I'd make and I don't want a former CEO as my MP, I want someone with an appreciation of people and society, not a balance sheet and shareholder returns.

VTech

verylonglegs wrote:

I'm not sure why you see business executives and politcians as the same thing anyway? It's not an association I'd make and I don't want a former CEO as my MP, I want someone with an appreciation of people and society, not a balance sheet and shareholder returns.

An ideal MP is someone who has integrity, a will to fight for what they believe in and someone able to balance the books.
Having integrity and the fight isn't enough if you can't manage the funds.
Most large companies bring a new CEO in to settle the waves, listen to those around them and make the wheels turn in a positive manner, exactly the same as you want your MP to work.
To listen to the local parish councils, to listen to the people in the field and to make sure things work efficiently.

My analogy is about right, your MP has to make sure that the fight they put up can be afforded by the budget they have because its fighting for things that can't happen that cause the backlash from the constituency in the end anyway.