I should also add, my politics class of last year ALL agreed that politicians should be paid in excess of £150 000 and keep expenses. (I did not get on with that crowd)
Their reasoning: that they could be earning that money in other high city jobs easily.
There's some sense in that, unfortunately. Politics shouldn't be something that people go into
for the money, but at the same time it shouldn't be like doing voluntary work, or the country would be run by some kind of crazy extremists or, at best, a bunch of idealistic hippies (which might be good, in some ways, for about six months...).
As it is now, we have this awkward system where politicians aren't
badly paid - they're well paid compared to you and I, but then it's a very difficult job with enormous responsibility (if they take it seriously). But at the same time their salaries are absolutely piddling compared with City workers - the BIG difference being the bonuses. So instead the politicians play the system and get every perk and allowance they possibly can. A bigger salary plus justifiable expenses (minus all the dodgy housing allowances) might be better.
I think another problem with the top politicians today is that they're all
career politicians. In the past people tended to go into politics after a career in industry, business, landowning or farming - so yes, most of them were posh, but they still had experience of dealing with real people and real problems in the real world (like Vince Cable, the only politico who seems to be talking sense about the economy). Nowadays they get out of Oxford or Cambridge, get their legal qualifications or whatever, but then go immediately into a career as a junior-under-secretary's-third-assistant and work their way up from there. So they don't appreciate the realities of the health service, public transport, cr@ppy schools or the finance sector because they've never had to deal with it - and they end up interpreting "success" in terms of mere statistics.
