Nurse arrested for murdering babies

arknor said:
MPs get 300 quid for attending parliament? a day? and 90% of them just sit there doing nothing... it's also part of their job they get paid for?
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Members of the House of Lords receive a £361 per day attendance allowance, plus travel expenses and subsidised restaurant facilities. Apparently, they get paid when they turn up and a lot of them don't come back after lunch. Nice work if you can get it!
 
The best are those 'paired' MPs who only ever turn up if a vote is close and their vote is needed. In this Parliament that will be unlikely. These MPs are free to get on with their other jobs.

I wonder what they would say if people claimed unemployment benefits(a fraction of MP's salaries) but went about other jobs?
 
booyaka said:
Maybe consider it a civic duty once in your lifetime... You know - help society out etc... :rolleyes:

Most of the time it's a couple of days, maybe a week out of your 60/70/80 year lifetime...

it's not a lot to ask...
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I'd be more than happy to do jury service, but unfortunately my mortgage lender, utility providers, childminder and local supermarket don't take "civic duty" as payment.

I'd either have to take it as annual leave, spend the time working rather than jurying, or not sleep for the duration so I could catch up on work during the night, none of which would be particularly healthy or fair, either for me or the person I'm supposed to be giving a fair trial.
 
Haggisman said:
I'd be more than happy to do jury service, but unfortunately my mortgage lender, utility providers, childminder and local supermarket don't take "civic duty" as payment.

I'd either have to take it as annual leave, spend the time working rather than jurying, or not sleep for the duration so I could catch up on work during the night, none of which would be particularly healthy or fair, either for me or the person I'm supposed to be giving a fair trial.
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If you can take annual leave, presumably you aren't self employed? If you work for a company you might want to check what policy your employer has about this, as you may still get paid whilst on jury duty or when called to attend court as a witness.
 
Mr Badger said:
If you can take annual leave, presumably you aren't self employed? If you work for a company you might want to check what policy your employer has about this, as you may still get paid whilst on jury duty or when called to attend court as a witness.
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Haha, good one!

No, we don't get ****. Just another way my wonderful employer shows how much they value their staff :cry:

A week or so I could do, and take as annual leave, but if it went on longer than that it would start to cause us problems.

As @arknor has mentioned, it would result in a double-whammy of significantly higher childcare costs, coupled with a loss of income.

Edit: ok, so it does look like you can actually claim for childcare expenses on top of the barely-minimum-wage allowance, which would probably make it just about manageable: https://www.gov.uk/jury-service/how-to-claim-expenses
 
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Mr Jack said:
Nope, the costs of childcare are included in that limit.
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Fair enough, so bring the kids with you then I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: Looks like I could claim the loss of earnings (but not childcare) from my home insurance, so I guess the way to do it would be to claim childcare expenses from the court, and loss of earnings through insurance.
 
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Haggisman said:
Fair enough, so bring the kids with you then I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: Looks like I could claim the loss of earnings (but not childcare) from my home insurance, so I guess the way to do it would be to claim childcare expenses from the court, and loss of earnings through insurance.
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would that not count as a claim on your insurance then putting your premiums up?
 
Mr Jack said:
This is a staggeringly dishonest misrepresentation of the pairing system.
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It isn't though. These MPs dishonestly claim to represent their voters in Parliament but do not. They should be thrown out of Parliament. If they cannot devote the time to do the job they should never have put their names forward. It is a syptom of the outdated 'boys club' Westminster gas not got rid off.
 
do_ron_ron said:
It isn't though. These MPs dishonestly claim to represent their voters in Parliament but do not. They should be thrown out of Parliament. If they cannot devote the time to do the job they should never have put their names forward. It is a syptom of the outdated 'boys club' Westminster gas not got rid off.
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So you think that when an MP is going for cancer treatment, for antenatal care, or representing the country overseas they should - instead of being paired with an MP on the opposite benches so that their absence doesn't impact outcome - scurry back in order to vote? What a fantastic idea. I'm sure that'll help MPs do their job :rolleyes:
 
Mr Jack said:
So you think that when an MP is going for cancer treatment, for antenatal care, or representing the country overseas they should - instead of being paired with an MP on the opposite benches so that their absence doesn't impact outcome - scurry back in order to vote? What a fantastic idea. I'm sure that'll help MPs do their job :rolleyes:
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Except it is not just down to sick MPs etc. It is openly abused, like so much in the HoC. We only mange to hear about these things when the media decide to allow us to do so. Things such as MPs expenses scandal were known for years before certain newspapers decided to highlight them.
 
Mr Jack said:
So you think that when an MP is going for cancer treatment, for antenatal care, or representing the country overseas they should - instead of being paired with an MP on the opposite benches so that their absence doesn't impact outcome - scurry back in order to vote? What a fantastic idea. I'm sure that'll help MPs do their job :rolleyes:
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I think the problem is the whole system makes the assumption that, whilst politically not aligned ultimately everyone involved is essentially a decent person who wants to do their best.
which is fine until you get a bunch of corrupt inept tosspots in their role
I don't know if it is just more exposed now or that the current lot are just worse than. they have been before
 
bigmike20vt said:
I think the problem is the whole system makes the assumption that, whilst politically not aligned ultimately everyone involved is essentially a decent person who wants to do their best.
which is fine until you get a bunch of corrupt inept tosspots in their role
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Not really, because the entire pairing system relies on people who have a motivation to expose abuses by the other side agreeing. Pairing occurs if, and only if, they can agree with the Whips from the opposite benches that someone should be paired and that they have someone available to pair.
 
Things such as MPs expenses scandal were known for years before certain newspapers decided to highlight them.
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That's a little simplistic. Each mainstream media outlet has it's slant/editorial bias. The particular story you mention the, MPs Expenses, was actually a modern example of what used to be call cheque book journalism, which landed other papers in the smelly stuff (e.g.Hitlers Diaries for the Times). The excel spreadsheet was offered to Private Eye for £300,000, they refused and printed the story about the CD Rom with MPs expenses on it. The Telegraph bought the disc, a few weeks later, for an undisclosed sum. It generated far more than the £300,000 in terms of papers sold etc.
 
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