Interesting Facts

According to a Freedom of Information request from the Evening Standard newspaper a committee of British MPs has spent around £250,000 since 1995 commissioning portraits and statues of other MPs. (Now no one would really begrudge Sir Winston a statue or two, and even a prime minister like Mrs T should have her photo taken for the wall of infamy, but pictures and statues have also been commissioned for junior ministers and backbenchers. Frank Doran, Labour MP and chairman of the Speaker's Advisory Committee on Works of Art said, "We've been collecting art in the House of Commons, and Parliament generally, since the 14th century.  We're preserving the history of Parliament through art. We're also doing a number of other things as part of that process: one is supporting young artists.")

According to analysis of the expenses claims of MPs in the UK, 25% of them have given jobs to relatives. (Figures from the IPSA (Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority) show that 155 MPs – nearly one in four – have wives, children and even parents on the public payroll. Their relatives (aka “connected parties”) enjoy salaries as high as £50,000 for office duties. This is the perfect opportunity for me to introduce a new bit of vocabulary:- nepotism noun the practice among those with power or influence of favouring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs. ) !Note There is an online map where people can look at how much their MP is costing them, which is nice, but most people don't even know about it. http://www.parliamentary-standards.org.uk/InteractiveMap.aspx

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) has decided that MP's salaries in the UK are lagging behind that of Civil Servants. (So, are they going to bring Civil Service pay in-line with pay for British MPs? No, of course not; it looks like they're going to award themselves a £10,000 pay rise.  A massive 25%. MPs are currently paid £65,738 a year, and in a recent poll they (the MPs themselves) thought they should be paid £86,000 a year (some thought they should be paid £100,000). On top of that you have the "expenses". But before 1911 MPs weren't paid any salary, and in today's money that first salary would be worth, £39,000 - around Band 7 in the NHS for "specialist workers". An IPSA spokesperson told the Sunday Times: "There is no recommendation yet, there are no proposals yet. We are working on that. We are going to do this in a very public and proper way with consultation. We will be consulting before the end of June and a...