An MP’s work is hard, it’s not for part-timers
Smug poster boy of the sneering classes
TURNING UP THE HEAT Tweet from ex-Labour leader January 2017 – lands £650,000-a-year part-time job with City firm BlackRock Investment Institute September 2016 – starts lucrative public-speaking career, earning nearly £800,000 in six months January 2017 – takes £120,000-a-year part-time role as a fellow at Arizona State University Salary as Tory MP for Tatton, elected to the Cheshire constituency in 2001. He has a majority of 18,241 March 2017 – unveiled as editor of the London Evening Standard, despite no journalistic experience TOTAL, utter contempt.
That’s how George Osborne is treating you, me and everyone else who is paying his MP’s salary out of our taxes while he sashays off for a job as a show pony newspaper editor.
We knew this guy was greedy when he became the poster boy at a US investment fund on £650,000 for four days a month work. But even that, clearly, wasn’t enough.
And so the needs of his constituents and the ideals of politics have been squeezed into the odd hour he might have left to spare.
It is patently wrong that MPs are allowed to have second jobs. They are paid a salary most Brits can only dream of and their every working moment should be dedicated to serving those who pay their wages.
And that a politician has become a key player in our national media is equally bad. No wonder the public I THOUGHT it was fake news, I was very deeply surprised. I don’t think it’s something you can do part time.
I’ve never worked as hard in my life as I did as George’s predecessor. You start really early, you finish really late, you’re lucky to get a Sunday off and you spend an awful lot of time stuck in traffic jams on the M6.
I wouldn’t like to have a part-time MP. I’d like to think my MP is beavering away all the time. I know from personal experience how you have to stay at it and a lot of it is below the radar, dealing with individual cases.
I was an MP before the age of email and I would probably get about 150 OLD JOB Sacked Chancellor cashes in feels angry and left behind by an elite political class.
Most of us still go into journalism to shine a light on those who prefer to hide their hypocrisy and greed in shadows. But integrity is not an issue for the owners of the Evening Standard. The fact Osborne wasn’t even able to complete a journalism training scheme doesn’t seem to faze them.
This appointment represents everything that is wrong with this country – jobs for the boys from posh schools and a sneering contempt for everyone not of their West London dinner party scene.
It has demeaned both politics and journalism. Any decent man would be ashamed to even consider taking such a role – and Osborne is so unqualified, so conflicted and so obviously already employed elsewhere.
But shame is not an emotion that lives within his self satisfied soul. letters a day. The constituents come first. You hold regular surgeries and you make yourself available.
I still have spies up there and some of them were rather impressed by George.
Even as Chancellor he did more than the minimum as a constituency MP. How he can do it now is for his constituents to decide.
I think there is a potential conflict of interest. If there is a big editorial issue which conflicts with a Commons vote, which has priority?
I suppose after you’ve held one of the big offices of state life feels a bit empty. When I stopped being an MP, I breathed a sigh of relief, as I didn’t have to work so hard.