Times have changed for MPs and vicars
FANS of the BBC’s Poldark will know of the 18th century practice of vicars with wealthy parishes who left the work to underpaid curates and of MPs who rarely visited their boroughs.
Things are different now, but the stock of both vicars and MPs has gone down in the world.
Thank goodness Stockport has some fine examples: Andrew Gwynne, who led Labour’s “For the many not the Few” campaign and Ann Coffey who has worked tirelessly over many years.
In the Upper House, Lord Stunnell of Romiley has produced sheaves of written questions on worthy, dry subjects, while Lord Goddard has laboured on the Refreshments Committee (not doling out teas) making sure there are some.
The first vicar at St George’s on Buxton Road was Jeremy Thorpe’s grandfather, the Rev J H, but his palatial arts and crafts rectory is about to be transformed into apartments.
Vicars, like MPs, are now on fixed stipends and becoming an endangered species.
It was different in 1860 when the town’s two MPs, James Kershaw and John Benjamin Smith, clubbed together and built a brand new museum in Vernon Park, generously funded from their own money.
Smith gave the museum almost 50 paintings by old masters he purchased on a trip to Rome, but some clever later expert decided they were worthless fakes and most were consigned to a gloomy vault.
Just recently another expert identified them as genuine and valuable and they’ve come out again.
It would be unreasonable to expect our current local MPs and Lords to contribute on that scale of public generosity.
If our MPs retired from the Commons and became Lords or Baronesses they would only be entitled to £300 a day tax free for signing into the Lords (unless they waived the fee) and it’s not even okay to have a snooze in the Upper House anymore – though I can’t see how they will enforce that. Maybe an official with a long stick?
We Poldark fans enjoy his heroic speeches against injustice in the House and sincerely hope that his dastardly rival, George Warleggan, doesn’t get elevated to the Lords ahead of him. »»Displays on local government and politics can be seen in the free museum next door to Staircase House, with a range of books for sale including Stockport Heritage Magazine and across the road in St Mary’s Heritage Centre they have more.