Terry Wogan is famous for his question, “Is it me?” and one wonders how many people across the country echo those words on an almost daily basis.
We all reach that stage of life (well, mostly) when we recognise that youth’s excesses are a necessary part of growing up and that the very same excesses which once invoked outrage from an older generation can now be seen to prevent the rest of us from growing slowly catatonic.
What seems to be of far greater concern are the excesses of those whom we’ve elected to govern us. That a senior minister of the government is, yet again, embroiled in a fiasco over what she has seen fit to claim as “legitimate” expenses is no longer a surprise to a battle-weary Britain whose electorate has come to expect little else.
Call me old-fashioned but, if my sister lived in an economic development area where the Council Tax was far lower, I doubt that HMRC would accept that her house in Ebbw Vale could be considered my main residence when I clearly lived in the West Midlands, which is where my partner may have made a strong and enduring friendship with the man in Blockbuster.
Why do some people think that the rules are there for someone else to follow but not for them? It’s really no different from white-van-man careering through a 30mph limited area at 65mph and waving two fingers at anyone bold enough or stupid enough to remonstrate with him. The only differences are the scale of the problem and its magnetic appeal to publicity.
When the newspapers report that MPs are to receive a £1,500 pay rise (2.33%), together with a 6% increase in the amount claimed through expenses, one wonders how that sits with the two million unemployed and the hundreds of thousands whose hours and/or salaries have been reduced by 10% or more?
A handful of the more sentient amongst their number have scrambled to make it clear that they will not be taking the pay rise and one can only hope that when the elections come around ( or the lynching, whichever happens first) the electorate will remember who was and who wasn’t on side and at one with them.
An inquiry has been ordered into the whole question of MPs’ pay and expenses and, no doubt, that will be fair and impartial because it will be carried out by the same MPs who voted themselves the pay rise in the first place. One could happily endorse the suggestion that MPs should, instead, be taking a pay cut to show some empathy with normal people (the ones who voted for them) and to set an example to the rest of the public sector.
Not surprisingly, this award in the middle of the most damaging recession in recent memory, has been seen to fly in the face of attempts to restrain public sector pay. It will, undoubtedly, make it far more difficult to award anything less than 2.3% to the 6 million public sector workers.
Threatening noises
At the same time, NHS managers are seeking to use the parlous state of the economy to “unpick” the third year of the previously agreed salary increase for nurses because they cannot afford the promised 2.2% increase in 2010-11, and other local government managers are making similar threatening noises.
The unions, however, are adamant that they will be seeking pay increases of at least the same magnitude as that which MPs have awarded themselves.
So far, the rumbles of protest about the G20 summit have been unfocused and poorly co-ordinated. If the nation is to endure a year of protest about pay, the sooner the debacle of MPs’ pay and expenses is sorted out the better.
Closer to home, we should expect that our veterinary nurses and other support staff will be affected by a real level of inflation at 3.2%, as shown in the consumer prices index, despite the Government’s attempts to focus on RPI inflation levels at 0%.
No one doubts that practice is getting more difficult as the nation’s plight deepens. We shouldn’t be surprised, however, if during the next 12 months more and more support staff seek alternative employment should practitioners fail to heed the rumblings stage left.
As for government ministers, there will be no pay rise this year and one can only hope that Blockbuster will reduce the cost of overnight rental to accommodate the poor souls.
