Have to agree. If you are not doing it full time, then I don't think you are being a proper MP.
Exactly Nobody is conscripted into becoming an MP. If you aren't going to devote all your energy to the job, don't take £77,000 of taxpayers' cash and carry on doing your day job. Nobody SHOULD HAVE TIME to have another job if they're an MP.
Maybe they should introduce a minimum age for MPs and require them to have x years experience of working in the real world first. Stop them going from doing politics at uni, then working for an MP and moving on to be elected as one. So many of the current crop seem to have gone along that route and have no idea about how 99% of the population tick.
It isn't and they don't. The civil service runs the country which is why it doesn't all go to hell when countries like Belgium take 589 days after an election to come up with a coailtion government.
MPs do what the party Whips tell them so they vote according to what a few party leaders dictate on issues decided in camera by party apparatchiks or promoted by select committees who are as likely to listen to lobbyists and think tanks as they are to work stuff out for themselves.
Every now and again you do get a proper campaigning MP and even a government minister who does do what they believe when in office and even some who resign when they can't accept party policies or decisions.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
That's another thing I left off my list -whips. And political parties. What if they didn't exist and you voted for your MP as a free thinking individual who represented your views and worked for the interest of their constituencies ?
That's another thing I left off my list -whips. And political parties. What if they didn't exist and you voted for your MP as a free thinking individual who represented your views and worked for the interest of their constituencies ?
Unless 100% of the voters voted for the successful candidate it's highly unlikely that the MP would represent the views of all voters, or that he/she would be perceived as acting in the interest of all their constituents. Unless a local referendum was held before every parliamentary vote the MP couldn't know even the majority view of their constituents.
The idea of entirely independant MPs is one I broadly support,but if they are independant they will be advocating their views not the views of other people.
I'd certainly ban all political parties from local elections. Local elections should be for independents only standing purely on local issues: build a bypass, don't build a bypass, build more houses, stop building houses etc etc. Nothing to do with westminster or 10 Downing St.
Hosta - people standing for election publish leaflets and manifestos and so on which means that any voter interested enough can see what they're about and vote accordingly. Unfortunately, people vote along party lines without thinking or, worse still, don't vote at all and then complain about the outcome.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
Hosta - people standing for election publish leaflets and manifestos and so on which means that any voter interested enough can see what they're about and vote accordingly. Unfortunately, people vote along party lines without thinking or, worse still, don't vote at all and then complain about the outcome.
Posts
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
Nobody is conscripted into becoming an MP. If you aren't going to devote all your energy to the job, don't take £77,000 of taxpayers' cash and carry on doing your day job.
Nobody SHOULD HAVE TIME to have another job if they're an MP.
MPs do what the party Whips tell them so they vote according to what a few party leaders dictate on issues decided in camera by party apparatchiks or promoted by select committees who are as likely to listen to lobbyists and think tanks as they are to work stuff out for themselves.
Every now and again you do get a proper campaigning MP and even a government minister who does do what they believe when in office and even some who resign when they can't accept party policies or decisions.
Local elections should be for independents only standing purely on local issues: build a bypass, don't build a bypass, build more houses, stop building houses etc etc. Nothing to do with westminster or 10 Downing St.