The bloody cheek of it! I'm absolutely disgusted!

[Whydontpeoplegetit]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9181001/MPs-working-home-lockdown-charge-taxpayers-extra-gas-electricity.html

£9.1m claimed by MPs working largely from home for extra electricity and gas while the rest of the country is on 80% of their wages if not a lot less. I'm absolutely appalled that they earn £80k each and are getting a pay rise and then continue to kick us in the teeth by spending taxpayer money on stupid things. How about using the money to supply teachers with supplies that they need or giving it to the NHS to find appropriate PPE and paying your own bloody bills?!?

AIBU for feeling this way?

Can’t believe I’ve came on this thread to see people justifying that. When large numbers of the population have lost jobs, businesses etc. Fuck right off MN

this

@CrazyCatLazy Why are you working full time on 80% wages? You are either furloughed or you aren't?

@VinylDetective Thanks for providing an alternative source as the Daily Mail seems to have offended quite a few people.

I admit that I got it wrong that not all the expenses were on electricity and gas. My point is that they've claimed £9.1m when there are people struggling. Children are going hungry (because they voted for it and then did a U-turn when they got guilted into it), NHS workers are underpaid and will be suffering long-term from dealing with this pandemic, not to mention other front line workers such as teachers, shop floor workers, police officers and care workers as well as others.

I find it hard to justify them claiming anything when so many people are suffering and they're harping on at us that we all need to make sacrifices and we're all in this together to protect the NHS and save lives. £84,000 is a high wage and quite a few of them don't work for it.

I just can't bear seeing the meagre lunches children are getting and hearing about how the NHS, some self-employed who don't qualify for the furlough payments, other people who have been made redundant and front line workers are struggling to pay the bills and they've been wasting taxpayer money like £26m to some Spanish guy to source PPE for the NHS back in the first lockdown and all that money on track and trace that doesn't work and now this.

@Thewiseoneincognito

It really doesn’t bother me at all.

They’re quite hardworking in the main. I see your source is the Daily Mail so I can only imagine how riled up you must be and absolutely angry and disgusted lol, I say calm down.

Me personally, I don’t care.

It's not as if some of them could earn that sort of money elsewhere. My MP is an arts graduate, straight out of uni. When he canvassed round the door, I said would it be all right if I asked you a couple of questions to see if you can do the job? I asked him to explain how legislation is passed in Parliament. He mumbled something about getting back to me and off they went. I'm still waiting..

The point that went over a previous posters' head is that in The Netherlands, employed persons can deduct their entire travel to work costs from their tax bills. The travel limit for such claims is 120km or something. Whether public transport or own car. Its not an allowance - its a deduction of actual costs. In most cases, full costs.

I can't believe that british people are defending these elitist MPs behaving in such a grandiose way at such a time.

I completely agree with everything you say @Whydontpeoplegetit. I’m frankly appalled to see how happy people are to see their hard earned taxes used like this.

@Whydontpeoplegetit

I just find it so disgusting when they continue to harp on like they can sympathise with our struggles but yet people are managing on a lot less like those who have been made redundant, self-employed and other groups who don't get any financial help. Surely they should make sacrifices too.

Why?

Looking at it objectively we chose 650 people out of 60,000,000 to represent and govern us.

Why during one of the most challenging times for our country why would you want the 0.00001% of the population set aside to sort it out to be under extra stress?

I just don't see how it would help to make them "sacrifice" too.

Why during one of the most challenging times for our country why would you want the 0.00001% of the population set aside to sort it out to be under extra stress?

Why would you want them to have advantage? Aren’t we supposed to “all be in it together”?

@Sinful8 How can you make them out to be martyrs? They've made an absolute mess of this whole situation with money wasted everywhere. They've made quite a lot of people struggle to pay their bills and feed their families and yet you're saying they shouldn't have to face more stress, like paying for their utility bills? Don't make me laugh! Some of them are multi-millionaires who are doing this for the perceived power. Quite a few of them have second homes within the constituencies they "represent" and charge the taxpayer for. They're jokes who have only made this country worse and sit back while we've got the highest death rates per capita. They accuse charities who help people out of politicising the situation because they simply can't understand how people are struggling as they've never endured hardships.

They didn’t claim £9.1m on electricity and gas, that’s the entire annual expense budget for all MPs. It covers salaries for a lot of people, would you like them all to be sacked? Also they’re not getting their pay rise.

wut?

They claimed about 30m 2019-2020 financial year

Labour MPs get the same as Tory MPs though. Do we hate them too? Or are we just frothing at elitism generally?

If it wasn't well paid, we'd end up with it appealing purely to the independently wealthy. Which defeats the object. Whether you like the system or not, getting to the top of any game involves an increased salary.
Stop being naive about the salaries and get mad about what they do, who they give contracts to. Hold them accountable now for this clusterfuck.

But when/if we eventually get the conservatives out if power, do you want your favoured party in sack cloth & ashes? Because I want the best people with knowledge & capability. Not wishy washy saints!

In the wider scheme of well paid jobs, MP isn't that great!

In the wider scheme of well paid jobs, MP isn't that great!

Compared with BBC presenters, for example.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-54160658

You can claim a tax allowance for working from home even if our employers won't help. I think those of us who have jobs are lucky, given the present situation, we'd be worse off if we didn't have a job and still had to be at home.

I don't begrudge them and it would take a lot more than £80,000 pa to encourage me to be an MP.

If we paid MPs more, we may get more business people apply and not someone like Diane Abbott who does not know basic maths.

Says a lot about you mentioning this and not Priti Patel getting numbers wrong on the number of covid tests, or losing files. There seems to be a pattern of Tory incompetence, Theresa May lost a dossier on Paedophiles.

Compare it the system in the US - I guess the House of Representatives is similar to our Commons - about 450 members in the US.

They have a base salary of about $180K and then a variable allowance of about $1.3M to pay for personal expenses, office costs and mail costs.

Would that be a fairer system, less open to "abuse" as they get a fixed budget to spend as they wish (with various restrictions of course)?

Every person who is now working from home, who used to work from an office, can now claim £26 off pcm to offset increased utility bills etc etc. If your employer won't pay you this £26pcm (which then gets taxed at your prevailing tax rate i.e. if you're a 40% taxpayer, it will be taxed at 40%) then you can get this as a deduction on your tax bill, at your prevailing rate of tax and your tax code will get changed accordingly. Apply to HMRC if you need to go directly.

This has been widely publicised across national press, the BBC, places like MoneySavingExpert etc - why this has come to news to some people now, almost 1 year into this pandemic I don't know.

It should not be confused with the grant which MPs get to run their offices, the repayment of their expenses or indeed their salaries. Completely different things.

I know a lot of people are up in arms about the amount which an MP earns, however if you look at the hours that they work, the times of day that they work until (yes, I know that this could and should be changed etc etc), the travel requirements to London, etc etc, and then you look at the private sector salaries for senior managers in professions, it isn't actually that much. Plus the job security and longevity being an MP really isn't that good at all.

I find it hard to justify them claiming anything when so many people are suffering and they're harping on at us that we all need to make sacrifices and we're all in this together to protect the NHS and save lives.

you seem to be conflating a few things here. We want to protect the NHS and one of the ways we're doing that is WFH. That is what the MPs are doing.

Their claims system was adjusted to make it a bit more streamlined, and to account for extra costs that might occur in setting up their WFH set up, they were given a bit of extra manoeuverability. That is the least i would expect for all public servants to be honest, and it isn't shit that MPs have that in place, it is shit that other public servants don't.

Anyone can claim tax back on the extra costs incurred due to WFH. Some people seem to thing that means claiming for the entirety of their electricity bills - that's not how a tax rebate works.

Yes, people with jobs should be glad to have them. But that doesn't mean it's time to engage in a race to the bottom so everyone is working under the shittiest employer. It should be exactly the opposite.

(pp who is furloughed and getting 80% salary working full-time should dob their employer in and demand either their proper salary or stop working)

[quote UserEleventyNine]In the wider scheme of well paid jobs, MP isn't that great!

Compared with BBC presenters, for example.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-54160658[/quote]
And charity CEOs. If you look at the stats, a huge number earn more than double an MP salary.
A decent recruitment consultant will earn £85k in a year and also get their expenses paid.

The role needs to pay well. It's the people in the role that are the issue!

It's naive to think it should pay less.

I don’t think its a great deal, nor do I think they are particularly highly paid for the responsibility they have.

I earn a similar amount to an MP, my job is absolutely nowhere near as important or difficult as being an MP. My job also comes with employment rights.

@MarinPrime

I don't begrudge them and it would take a lot more than £80,000 pa to encourage me to be an MP.

I’d do it for nothing. It’s hardly onerous.

I’m surprised that they’re paying 80% to the furlough lot. If they thought they could get away with paying them a minimal benefit instead they would.

Believe me, being an MP or Councillor is really shit at the moment. You get blamed for everything and are expected to be available 24x7 for the most trivial complaint. I doubt they are claiming for what isn't necessary for essential travel and support staff.

If you think this is unreasonable, then I suggest YOU stand for one of these positions. Ah, thought not.

So, in April 2020 The 650 MPs claimed a total of £48,723 (avg £75 each) for energy, compared to £48,240 in April 2019. That's a total increase of about £483, or around 80p each on average!!!!!

Meanwhile, travel expenses fell from £1.8m to £412,000 over the period of the first lockdown period.

Forgive me if I can't be bothered rioting on the streets over that extra 80p on energy.

@jcyclops The Fail are gonna be gutted you did the maths and didn't just get wound up by the headline!

@VinylDetective Uh huh.
I wouldn't do a job that took me away from my home & family for several nights a week for nothing, onerous or not. I suspect you wouldn't want to pay for your own travel to do it for nothing either. Principles need common sense or they're fantasy.

@Chloemol

Interesting to see it’s the SNP MPs who have claimed the most!

If you work for home you can claim a tax free allowance of up to £26pm. Not as much obviously but it’s there. If your company won’t pay it phone HMRC and get your tax code changed

Are those figures for the 2019/20 financial year? Scottish MPs claim the most because of the cost of travel to/from their constituencies in normal times.

It costs a lot more to get to Westminster from Aberdeen than it does from Abingdon.