Giving to Charity
I was outraged to read earlier today that the bonkers Tory MP - Nadine Dorries - is to donate part of her £65,738 annual salary to charity.
Presumably the logic behind this 'generous' act is to compensate the taxpayer - for the fact that Nadine will not be doing her day job as an MP for the next 30 days - while she takes part in 'I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here'.
Now this works out to around £5,500 by my calculation - a not inconsiderable sum of money.
One spin-off of making a well publicised donation to a worthy cause - is that the act of 'charitable giving' reflects well on the person doing the giving - no bad thing if you're an elected politician.
Except for the fact that Nadine is being generous with other people's money - she's donating money she hasn't earned and should not be paid - when she's not capable of doing her job as an MP.
Imagine a home carer or a classroom assistant taking a month of their work - without asking anyone's permission in advance - then trying to curry favour by saying she'll donate her salary to a worthy cause.
Because that's how daft the whole business is - in any other walk of life Nadine Dorries would not be paid when she's not available for work - and would probably be disciplined or even sacked from her job.
A number of Scottish MSPs did something similar when they decided to go 'on strike' last year - in support of public sector workers who were striking over changes to their pension schemes.
Now I had no problem with MSPs donating a day's pay to the strike fund - but surely the point is that they were not entitled to be paid in the first place - if they were absent from work themselves that day.
So just like bonkers Nadine Dorries the MSPs were being generous with other people's money - money they had not earned and should never have been paid.
The problem with politicians is that they like to play by different rules to everyone else - to say one thing then do another - and that's what helps to make people so cynical about politics these days.
