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| Sir Peter Bottomley with his Knight Bachelor medal, presented by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II during an investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace on March 10, 2011 (Image: Getty Images) Source: Sussex Live |
Ten years ago in an entry Honour and Dishonour I compared two honours for loyal service. A knighthood for Peter Bottomley after 35 years as a Member of Parliament and an MBE for eighty-three year old Kathleen White who had worked at Claverley Post Office near Wolverhampton for 68 years.
Miss White became sub-postmistress in 1960. She also spent 38 years on the parish council and ran the Sunday school at nearby All Saints Church for more than 20 years.
Sir Peter Bottomley deserves recognition for his candour as a member of the parliamentary Ecclesiastical Committee.
"In 2008 Bottomley's response to this duplicity was "Essentially everyone knew that when you had the ordination of women as priests that this would lead to the ordination of women bishops after a decent length of pause. Some would say it has now been an indecent length of pause."
"An odd sense of honour for someone in a trusted position. Perhaps having served on the Parliamentary Standards Committee and knowing so much about honesty, openness, evasion, misrepresentation and lying he felt well qualified to distinguish between honour and dishonour."
Ten years later and now father of the House of Commons, Sir Peter has been pleading the cause of 'struggling MPs'.
Sussex Live reports that "the Worthing MP called for a pay rise for MPs as living on £81k can be 'really grim'.
"Sir Peter made his comments as Brits - whose average full-time salary is just over £31,000 - face a cost-of-living crisis this winter with rising energy bills and soaring inflation."
Sky News reported: "Within 24 hours of his comments being published, a JustGiving fundraising page was created titled 'Please help feed struggling Sir Peter Bottomley!' - with all donations going to foodbank charity The Trussell Trust.
Sir Peter told LBC that a pay increase could be achieved by cutting the number of MPs by 10%.
Were the 77 year old MP to put himself at the head of the retirement queue after 46 years of unremarkable service he would have to manage on a final salary scheme pension.
Poor soul.
The problem is that we do not pay our top politicians enough. People of real ability can earn far more in the wider world than by serving us in Parliament. We end up with career politicians sponsored by interested
ReplyDeleteGroups or Tories who have either made their pile or have inherited their wealth. Let us pay a level of remuneration that will attract people of the ability who will lead us with the skills we deserve
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Like Nick Clegg and Jeremy Corbyn?
DeleteDon't make me laugh!
Sir Peter must be grateful his wife has a pension after 21 years in the Commons and that she can claim s daily hand out for visiting the Lords. Every little helps.
ReplyDeleteParliamentarians - and this isn't a partisan argumemt, because all parties are to some degree implicated - appear to inhabit a parallel universe. During my working life my salary before tax never quite - though admittedly rather nearly - exceeded £30,000 p.a. OK, I retired at the end of 2006, but I reckoned that I earned pretty much what I deserved and that it was enough for me to live quite comfortably. I was content with what I had.
ReplyDeleteWhereas MPs - even ancient non-entity backbenchers like Bottomley - appear never to be satisfied, even when they're earning well over twice the amount that I earned when I retired and additionally have - rightly - access to an impressive raft pf expenses payments in recognition of the peculiar circumstances of their employment.
I suggest that Sir Peter would do well to button his lip and be grateful that, at his age, the confidence of his constituents - however misplaced! - has resulted in him continuing to earn the significant salary that he trousers. A fair number of those constituents, in their declining years, will be eking out an existence on nothing more generous than the state retirement pension.
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