michael adams wrote:
"I don't claim that I'm in other than a very happy position
compared with most people, because, having spent a bit of time
in the City before I was elected, being able to make a bit of
money while I was there, I have a cushion."

That was one of the things that ****ed me off when I was a local
councillor, where everything was under the thumb of people with nice
comfortable outside incomes, pocketing the full councillor's pay and
would go swanning off "ooo, I'm busy", dumping all the work on the few
people who were doing it as a job of work with no other income, across
all the parties; so you'd get a core of councillors doing 50-odd hours
a week with a 12K total income and most of the rest doing about 10
hours with a 80K+ total income. And now Eric the Pickle wants to make
it even worse by insisting that elected public office be only open to
people rolling in money by insisting councillors aren't paid at all.

JGH