Category: Money

Love of it is the root of all evil, according to the Bible. (Tip – telling them this does NOT work with debt collectors.)

Advent #18

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family, Money, Pets

A bit like the mid-season two-parters so beloved of noughties Doctor Who showrunners, and even though I didn’t even bother with a cliffhanger yesterday, I’m back at the Christmas Market.

Not literally. (To end up at a Christmas Market once can be considered a misfortune (and so on).) But after my moaning yesterday, it would be unfair not to point out that some people DO enjoy going. And I’m married to one of them.

At the risk of sounding a little Scrooge-y, I ALWAYS start from the assumption that I’m not going to spend anything. Whereas conversely, and despite having been married for quite some time now, my wife always goes in with the assumption that I AM going to.

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In terms of Christmas Markets, I’m afraid Mrs Curnow is easy prey to a ‘free sample’ – as in a tiny little paper cup of this gin or that rum. Every time we go, sooner or later (and usually sooner) there will be a sample which she can’t resist. (This is more or less the moment at which I realise how different our assumptions about spending money are.)

Dare I say, even our puppy was less-easily swayed. Almost the first stall we came to was a ‘free sample’ of some fancy, highfalutin dog food – which Daisy was having none of. Considering that she eats cardboard, shoes and floor tiles on a daily basis (and considering she turned down the free sample but shortly thereafter was keen to smell another dog’s butt) it’s hard not to take that as a damning critique of the dog food.

So thankfully, I can report I didn’t spend any money.

Well, not on dog food anyway. Mrs Curnow found a ‘free sample’ that she somehow convinced me she couldn’t live without. How does she do that??

Advent #17

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Moaning, Money

I don’t really enjoy Christmas Markets.

I accept that’s probably my fault rather than theirs, I don’t much like shopping in general (and I’m certainly a very inept browser). But setting that aside, I have concluded that the best way to go to a Christmas Market is EITHER when you’ve already done all your Christmas shopping so you don’t have any pressure to buy anything; OR when you’re sufficiently well-off that you can, and in the words of Jessie J (ooh, look at me getting down wid da kidz) forget about the price tag.

We went to Exeter’s Christmas Market yesterday and as always there was lots of great-looking stuff. Putting aside my inner Ebenezer, I have nothing but admiration for the people who make jewellery or clothes or decorations or… well, or whatever it is they make; and then turn up day after day in all weathers to sell it.

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But we all baulked, for example, at a range of gorgeous multi-coloured fleece coats which were priced at over £200 – at every turn, dare I say, there were prices which I think many, if not most, people would have to think twice about. Even the food stalls, which looked to be doing the roaringest trade of anybody there, seemed expensive. But given that, as Napoleon said, an army of shoppers marches on its stomach, I guess they had a kind of ‘captive market’ thing going on.

I moan about going every year but despite that, I wouldn’t want the place to close down. Still, in these times where most people seem to be more and more battered by the cost of living, I worry. It would be an awful shame if all those creative sewers and silversmiths and artists ended up pricing themselves out of the (Christmas) Market. 

A Stupid I.D.ea..?

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Little Bit Of Politics, Moaning, Money

I have to assume Keir Starmer ISN’T an idiot.

I appreciate that there are countless examples of people in high positions who are patently unsuited to their roles, but Starmer was on top of his brief as Shadow Brexit Secretary, he was formerly Director of Public Prosecutions… Surely he CAN’T be stupid?

But he does make it awfully hard to believe that.

The latest idea to bubble to the top is Digital ID Cards, something not even in the wind Wednesday, rumoured Thursday, and announced Friday. Setting aside the “is he or isn’t he a thicko” debate, I admire his willingness to announce schemes that NOBODY wants. Freezing the pensioners, playing swapsies with the French, and now this.

Digital ID Cards are absolutely essential (apparently) to crack down on illegal immigrants, by preventing them working in the UK. (We presumably have to set aside the implication that therefore he’s giving up on stopping them actually getting here in the first place.) Because employers will need to check ID before employing anybody.

I mean, yes, I guess, on the face of it, maybe, that does sound reasonable. But alas, only if you are (as suggested above) a stupid idiot. Because he would surely only announce such a scheme if he was somehow blissfully aware that we already have the National Insurance number. That is, a UNIQUE number for EVERY person, used by every employer for every employee on the PAYE system.

In the old days, I’ll accept, it would be pretty easy to fake that – we all know the format so giving your new boss a credible number would be child’s play (they don’t call me Mr AM 44 51 28 C for nothing). But for at least the past decade each time an employer runs their payroll they have to submit it electronically to HMRC.

In other words, it is now easy for HMRC to check that ALL the numbers on ALL the payrolls in ALL the UK are correct. Not just correct, it should also be easy to check that each NI numbers is only being used once. Being a UNIQUE number it would be pretty easy for an exceptions report to highlight any number linked to a worker in Dumfries AND also somebody drawing a pension in Sidmouth, or signing on in Maidstone. The optimist in me would like to think there’s ALREADY such a report (because in a sense, if nobody is actually checking anything, why are we submitting payrolls to HMRC in the first place?) but even if there isn’t, I suspect any half-decent programmer could get one knocked up in a morning.

The problem with the system, presumably, is that (shock!) sometimes employers DON’T put people through their PAYE system. Or, less illegally, maybe they use self-employed workers. Self-employed workers do of course also need an NI number for their tax returns. But at the risk of being branded a cynic, if I was working illegally, in a country I wasn’t supposed to be in, I probably WOULDN’T bother submitting a tax return.

At a time when we’re constantly being beaten around the head with the fact that there’s not enough money for repairing schools, recruiting dentists, heating pensioners, it constantly surprises me how much money apparently IS lying around for what feel increasingly like another of Homer Simpson’s “crazy schemes”. If checking up on illegal workers really is a big thing, then it’s surely cheaper & quicker to make the current NI system work properly, than to implement and enforce a whole NEW system. And if the reason is that they can’t make THAT system work, why on Earth do they expect more success with a NEW one?!

It’s almost a secondary point but the other puzzling thing is that, despite it being so vitally important, the intention is only for the Digital ID scheme to be in place by the end of this parliament. To me “I can get it done in four years” doesn’t smack of urgency – but it does slightly have the feel of, if there’s any problem with it at least it won’t be MY problem.

Hmm. Maybe he’s NOT so stupid after all.

In Liz We Truss

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Little Bit Of Politics, Moaning, Money

I know it’s an awful title, sorry, but it just had the edge over “Elizabeth – Aaaarrrrrgh!” (By which I mean, I tossed a coin).

With the appropriate Spoiler Warning in case you’ve been recording all the news to binge watch later, it seems now almost certain that Liz Truss is going to win the Tory Leadership Contest. Nothing is ever 100% definite until it’s announced of course, and I certainly don’t always get it right (“what do you mean, the new Doctor Who ISN’T a woman?!”) but… well, the media seems to be taking it as read and who am I to argue? I really have to hand it to the Conservative Party: every time you think “at least the next leader can’t be as bad as this one” they somehow manage to pull it out of the bag and give us somebody even worse!

Not that Boris ‘Worse-Than-Theresa-May’ Johnson is gone yet, there’s still time for him to make a mess of things… And how kind of him to pop up yesterday to prove that very point, when he suggested tackling the cost of living crisis by buying a new kettle. I’m not disputing either the fact, or the general principle, that buying a more efficient kettle will save you money – but I suspect the people struggling most with their energy bills don’t have the luxury of buying a new £20 kettle now, just so that in three years’ time they can feel the warm self-satisfied glow of knowing they’ve saved themselves a tenner.

The bigger problem is the implication that Boris & co think “people worrying about their energy bills” actually means “people complaining about paying bigger bills”. Of course that’s a part of it, but the real issue is people NOT BEING ABLE to pay bills at all. In fact, although the recent pre-Autumn focus has portrayed this as an impending crisis, for the worst-off I suspect the crisis well and truly impended some months ago with the first massive price hike in the Spring.

Interestingly, Boris also claimed that his successor will be able to announce a huge package of measures – with the implication that it will be significantly more impactful than just giving everyone a free kettle. I can’t quite make up my mind if this is him putting the boot in by writing cheques his successor will have to honour; or whether he’s generously  letting his successor announce it so that they can make a good first impression. (I mean ‘generously’ in a political sense of course. Dragging the uncertainty out is not in any way generous to people sat watching their Smart Meters flashing away like a strobe light)

In terms of first impressions though, and going back to Liz ‘Has-The-Potential-To-Be-Worse-Than-Boris-Johnson’ Truss, she seems to be establishing her suitability for the role of Prime Minister even before officially winning the race – by which I mean she has already made several U-Turns and offended the French. Other than that, her main ‘cost of living’ policy seems to be the old tax cuts chestnut. Which is something I guess, but again I’m going to suggest the people that have already been heavily-impended on, may not be earning enough to pay tax anyway.

Maybe the problem, deep down, is that they (and I don’t mean this as a dig against politicians in general; only the present government which seems to be an extraordinary, Dickensian collection of grotesques)– They kind of think it’s our own fault if we’re struggling. Our fault for not getting a job; or another job; or a better job; for not having enough savings; for not investing wisely; for not even having the foresight to buy better kettles.

If they can manage then why on earth can’t the rest of us? That feels like it’s the attitude, that it’s all to do with organising ourselves better rather than not actually having enough money, and as such I wonder when it comes to it whether much more support will be forthcoming at all.

So perhaps Monday’s announcement won’t be so much about who will win; but, will the rest of us lose?

Have a good weekend! 😊

Advent #20

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Little Bit Of Politics, Money

It’s probably not many people’s first thought when talking about Christmas songs but Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? always gets some airplay during December, which presumably means a bit more money raised. Although there’s a debate to be had about whether giving to charities lets the government off the hook, the fact is that there always seems to be a need for them.

This year, Crisis is running an anti-homeless campaign. I was faintly aware of it blurring past while fast-forwarding through some TV adverts, but when my colleague at work switched radio stations I heard the full version and was immediately intrigued by the donation being asked for.

Likely, any random number would have got my attention (£18.37 or £21.64, just to pick two at, um, random) but in fact it’s £29.06 which (less the pound sign) is my birthday! In terms of targeted advertising it could only have been bettered by a voiceover saying, “Stop speeding through the bloody ads, this is important!”

I’m fortunate enough never to have answered “no” to the question, “Did Father Christmas come?”; and to have never been hungry at Christmas. (Quite the opposite – even a trim, sylph-waisted figure like me gets into that groove where you keep automatically putting food in your mouth, like a Pez dispenser stuck in reverse.) And I’m lucky enough never to have been homeless.

Maybe we’re more inclined to give at this time of year. During the run up to Christmas anyway, when we spend 24 days wishing the best to everyone (before hunkering down and wanting the real world to leave us alone for a few days). Maybe it’s better to give than to receive.

Or maybe, as Mike Smash and Dave Nice have been telling us for almost 30 years – Christmas IS charity.  

Counting Down The Days

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Brexit, Confused, Little Bit Of Politics, Moaning, Money

Is everyone getting excited?

Not long to go now! How many more sleeps is it? I hope I get what I want…

Yes the election is almost upon us – and at Curnow Towers the onslaught of party gumph through our letter box, has begun. So far, we’ve had two different Tory ones (one from the candidate, and another not from him but telling us what a nice chap he is) and two Labour ones (both the same – although I’m sure she’s a nice chap too).

It really is a ‘lesser of two evils’ election isn’t it  – or, rather (lack of gumph from the other parties notwithstanding) a ‘least of several evils’. According to the internet, three other  candidates are standing in this area. As well as the aforementioned Blues and Reds, we’ve also got a Yellow, a Green, and an Independent to choose from. Consequently, the arrival of the postman this coming week will be like the worst Advent Calendar ever as we open the door to find yet more electoral literature.

Statistically and historically speaking, our seat is usually Tory – but has occasionally gone Lib Dem, given which the Yellows would be either mad or cocky not to send out any information. And surely the Independent guy will send something too, because without that… well frankly, without that nobody would even know he exists.

As for the Greens, I feel for them rather. On these occasions, they must be deeply conflicted as to whether to send flyers out or not – because not only will that be using up a huge amount of natural resources (which they are very much down on in the Green Party) there’s also the huge carbon footprint involved in delivering to every address.

Curiously, or at least I think it is, of the three leaflets we’ve had so far only one has actually been printed in this constituency, and, credit where it’s due, that one was the Tory guy’s. The second Tory one was printed in Redruth, which is at least in this part of the country, even if not actually in the same county. And the Labour one was printed in Northamptonshire, a mere 260 miles and 5 counties away.

I mentioned this on Twitter, and some wise and insightful person kindly replied to point out that it was probably cheaper. I had in fact worked that out all by myself, not being quite as stupid as you might think, but my point was more that I wouldn’t put much faith in our local MP sticking up for local enterprises if “it will be cheaper up North” is the default winner of any argument.

At the moment, to my surprise, I’m tending towards the Lib Dems. Tactically, they’re the only realistic alternative to the current chap – and although I still can’t entirely get over their extraordinary brass neck in standing on a clear policy of instantly ditching the Brexit referendum result, I do at least commend them for giving a straight answer to a straight question.

Although… in voting that way, I sort of feel I’m doing what Parliament has been doing with Brexit all this time, with its ‘blocking no deal while at the same time not accepting the current deal’ dithering. That is to say, I’m dodging making a real decision.

Frankly, Corbyn’s moment was 2017, he blatantly won’t do as well this time. And the Lib Dems (despite the fevered imaginings of Ms Swinson) are not going to sweep to power on a yellow wave. Which means that in denying the Tories this seat, what I’m really doing is voting for a hung parliament again.

But if (to the great shame of Labour who, as opposition, after nearly a decade ought to be shining like a beacon of hope in the darkness, not coming across as an undecided, dithering shambles)–  if the only alternative to that is a Tory majority, well…

It really IS a ‘lesser evil’ election isn’t it!!

So, yes, Lib Dem. Surprisingly. Probably.

Although if they don’t send me any gumph, or even worse if I find it was printed in Kilmarnock…

Hooray, Hooray, It’s A Holi-Holi-day

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Confused, Friends, Moaning, Money, Pets, Work

I’m on holiday.

Not in a ‘by the pool, excuse the slow typing because I’m holding a pina colada in the other hand’ kind of way. More in a ‘days to use up and rapidly running out of year’ sort of way.

I rather struggle with holidays. In the normal course of events I’m constantly battling with  my instinct towards laziness, but ironically, when I’m actually given licence to be lazy (this isn’t an official licence you understand, I’m not getting it on direct debit or anything) it’s just… Well, it’s too much of a good thing, is what it is.

Maybe I just get bored easily. The start of the day is OK, I can easily pass a leisurely, be-dressing gown-ed breakfast while watching, say, an episode of Friends (I’m now into the final run, and Ross is fine) or some more of The Crown. After that I tend to mooch rather than rush through my bathroom shenanigans before finally getting around to walking the dogs who, long before this point, have rumbled that I’m obviously not going to work.

But when all that’s done and out of the way, and the rest of the day lies open before me, a blank canvas, world’s my oyster, blah blah blah… At that point I feel I really ought to be doing something.

And of course, there’s always plenty to do – cars to wash and windows to clean and ironing to, erm, iron and… Well, there’s an unquantifiable amount of plenty I could be doing; but that makes my time off feels like a wasted opportunity, like I’m fundamentally missing the point if I’m just going to dig out the hoover or scrub something.

I realise, to be fair, that I may be overlooking the obvious in simply BEING on holiday rather than GOING on holiday. And yet, it would just never occur to me that I could get on a plane and fly away from the road where the cars never stop going through the night to a life where I can watch the sun set and–  

No, hold on, I’ve come over a bit Dido there. We don’t live by a road where cars keep on going through the night (the occasional tractor, yes, but not cars) and if I was all that keen on sunsets, there’s one every night just behind the garage block outside our front door.

Nevertheless, slightly-outdated pop cultural references aside, the general point is correct. At least, I think it is, I’m going to have to put down my pina colada and just cast my eye back over the previous couple of paragraphs, just hold on a tic. I realise, overlooking the obvious, capital letters, sunset, tractor…

Yes, yes the general point is correct – which is that I don’t in any way associate ‘being on holiday’ with ‘going away’. Frankly, the heady mix of three dogs, five cats and just the one income has sort of seen to that over the years.

But then, the truth is I’m not really a ‘lying by the pool’ sort of person anyway –  nor a ‘scaling Ben Nevis’ sort either. Maybe what it boils down to is that I’m like Margo in The Good Life, and that I simply don’t know how to enjoy myself.

Some people can, they can switch off from the normal routine, the workaday treadmill, and step away (or fly away) and throw themselves into… well, into whatever it is they do when they’re on holiday. It’s a state of mind, an attitude that seems easy and natural but which I have to conclude, can be very difficult to reach.

Wish I was there.

It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want To

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Brexit, Confused, Little Bit Of Politics, Moaning, Money, Trump

Labour should be the obvious choice… Shouldn’t it?

Just across the house from the grim prospect of the Tory Government sits the main Opposition Party, and in the normal course of events I’d have expected them to seen by now like our great golden salvation, a no-brainer option, confidently in line for a clear victory. Like in 1997, when we were so fed up of the Tories after 18 years that of course Labour won by a landslide.

Yet somehow, they… well, he mainly if I’m honest… seem such an unpalatable alternative. Either Corbyn has a plan for Brexit or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t, he probably ought to admit that, rather than making rash “I’ll sort it within 6 months” claims. And if he does… then by crikey, he ought to have shared it long before now. Brexit is not (or at least, it shouldn’t be) a party issue, it’s a national one.

Then there’s the whole antisemitism controversy. I must confess I don’t entirely understand it, but the fact that the story hasn’t been quashed, and that it seems to come from so many sources suggests that even if it’s not Corbyn himself that’s riddled with it, the party under him certainly is. It’s just too wide-ranging, too long-lived to be ‘fake news’. What sort of man would we be letting into Downing Street? I don’t mind him snubbing Trump, but I do wonder what sort of people he would be happy pallying up to.

And then there’s his policies. Don’t get me wrong, there’s something laudable about the suggestion of reduced working hours, about a less-punitive benefits system, about perhaps renationalising the railways (although it’s come too late for our local station, alas, they’ve built a bloody great Waitrose over it), about scrapping university fees…

But there’s also a huge streak of naivete in the old fallback of promising to fund it by putting higher taxes on the rich and on corporations. That’s fine if they have no option but to pay up… but last time I checked, there were other countries with other tax rates, so the chances are that many of the very, very rich who’d be in line to pay very, very high taxes will just hop in their private jets and find somewhere less-taxing to live instead.  

So far, so bad. I’ve talked myself out of the Conservatives – now the Labour Party too!

I wouldn’t want to be accused of favouritism though, so let’s quickly rule the Lib Dems out as well. No doubt they have lots of policies (well, I assume they probably do) but as far as I can see they’re only really standing on a policy of simply scrapping Brexit.

Now, as it happens, I think the decision to leave the EU was the wrong one, but cancelling it is not the same as turning the clock back and undoing the vote – and it is an enormous leap from wishing you could do that, to a political party actually deciding they can choose to ignore it.

If you’re a remainer and you support the Lib Dems in this, then fine – but  next time, when somebody wants to arbitrarily overturn a decision that you agree with, you won’t have much of a leg to stand on. Once there’s a precedent… In effect, and rather ironically, the Liberal Democrats are standing on a ticket of abandoning Democracy for this election.

Alas, my own arbitrary and undemocratic, self-imposed word limit means I don’t have much space left to bemoan the Brexit Party, but in a nutshell my main issues with it are:

1) Nigel Farage

2) The telling fact that Trump likes him

3) Anne Widdecombe

I suppose I should mention the Green Party too, but to be honest I’ve all but lost the will to live – anyway, it’s not like I’m the BBC or anything, obliged to be impartial. They may all be sane, lovely people, but they probably won’t get many votes. (Sorry Greens.)

So that’s the election. Uncaring Tories, amateur-hour Labour, undemocratic Lib Dems, and the hideous Brexit Party. Oh, and the Greens. (Sorry Greens.)

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Number Ten at Number Ten

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1970s, Childhood, Doctor Who, Little Bit Of Politics, Moaning, Money

Sorry, politics again.

Like Doctor Whos of the modern era, the Prime Minister has changed yet again. It’s the tenth Prime Minister since I’ve been alive – that’s an average of just under five years each, although of course there have been two long-players amongst them. (Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, obviously.)

I can remember as a child hearing on the news that Jim Callaghan was leaving. (He was my third Prime Minister, whose appearance later changed after he confronted the giant spiders of Metebelis Three – and no, I won’t be getting bored of this tiresome comparison anytime soon, sorry). Other than a name and a face on the news, and what with my being not quite eight at the time, I didn’t know much about him. Not even which lot he was leader of.

But regardless of the detail, I knew he was leaving what seemed to be a pretty important job – it had to be, based on how often he appeared on TV (usually just after Grandstand and before The Generation Game). So in my political naivete I had sympathetic visions of the poor guy having to get up in the morning to go and find another job. Would he, I wondered, be on the bins by next week?

That, of course, isn’t quite how it works – some four decades on, I’ve learned from simple observation that, post-Downing Street, there’s plenty of opportunities for an ex-PM. The lecture circuit, the book deal, ludicrously high fees for ludicrously low hours in consultation or as a board member to some favoured company.

What I didn’t know until today, which is why in fact I’ve hardly mentioned Boris and haven’t even mentioned Brexit at all is that there is in fact a thing called, ‘The Public Cost Duty Allowance’.

I was already aware that the ‘golden handshake’ when you go from being an MP to suddenly not being an MP any more is rather more generous than it would be if, say, I were to go in to work on Monday and find myself given the boot – and only recently I was ranting about the over-generous allowance for maternity leave. But what I didn’t realise was that there is the aforementioned allowance “to assist former Prime Ministers with the costs of continuing to fulfil duties associated with their previous position in public life.”

It’s newsworthy today because as my brother has pointed out on Facebook, Nick Clegg has (a) managed to have the point stretched to include deputy Prime Ministers such as, just to give one example, just off the top of my head, such as himself; and (b) accordingly claimed £113,000.

I’ve put in the bit about Nick Clegg partly to have a moan and partly to give a paragraph of thinking time, to try and derive some meaning from the phrase that ended the one before, because I’m not sure what duties former Prime Ministers have to fulfil, which are associated with their previous position.

I can believe that an ex-PM gets a lot of invitations to open this, join that, speak at such and such, and whatever – but in most instances those are going to be paid engagements; and besides, they’re not to do with their role as PM, it’s just basking in  the residual chutzpah of having been PM.

That is to say: how can there be a role of ‘ex-PM’ when the duties of the role are being carried out by the new PM? If they want to go off and do this, that or the other, fine carry on, but I’m struggling to see why the rest of us are subsidising it. Is it like having a wife, but keeping a mistress?!

However it works, it seems more than generous – in respect of the newest ex-PM, I think the second ever female Prime Minister is extremely lucky that we’ll be keeping her in the manner to which she’s become accustomed.

As for Mr Callaghan, at least now I know why he wasn’t emptying our bins the following week. He of course was famously followed by the first ever female Prime Minister.

You know, the one with the long scarf and the robot dog…

Liberty, Legality, Maternity

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Little Bit Of Politics, Moaning, Money

The news story that has niggled me the most this week, is this one:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48671092

Now, I absolutely agree that we need to have more women in Parliament – just looking at the line up of candidates for Tory leader on Tuesday’s debate made that abundantly clear (although I must just add the disclaimer that, thank goodness that ghastly Esther McVey didn’t get past the first round).

So going in, I was perfectly prepared to be outraged on MP Stella Creasy’s behalf. I quickly discovered, as I read, that MPs do not get maternity leave, which really did sound genuinely outrageous. Every (other) employer in the land has to, why should the Houses of Parliament get away with it?

It struck me that here was a rare example of MPs getting a worse deal than a regular person, and there certainly aren’t many instances of that, other than… Erm… Well, there aren’t any instances of that in fact.

Statutory maternity arrangements for a pregnant woman are that she can have up to a year off work. For the first 6 weeks of her maternity leave she receives 90% of her salary, then a maximum of £149 for 33 weeks, and then, for the remaining 13 weeks, nothing at all. That’s not necessarily great, but it’s better than nothing (well, for 39 weeks it is anyway). And, getting back to my being outraged, it is a darned sight more than MPs get, because as has been previously mentioned, they don’t get maternity pay at all.

Except, in the midst of my outrage, and as I read the article in more detail, I came across the sentence, “MPs themselves are paid in full for the whole period.”

Ah. Right. I see.

So… although she’s not getting anything called maternity pay, in actual fact Ms Creasy can take off whatever time she likes and will still get her full MPs salary. Of just over £1525 per week. As opposed to £149 (or nothing) for anybody else.

Her argument seems to be that there is no facility to provide funding for a temporary replacement while she is on maternity leave. My counter-argument would be, what with all that ‘spare’ money (which just in case you couldn’t quite believe it the first time, is almost £1400 more per week than a normal person on maternity leave) she could surely fund it herself. In fact, just nip down to her local job centre and offer somebody £1000 per week to be an MP for 9 months, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of takers.

But no, what she would actually like is funding to be provided for, in effect, an extra MP during the period of her maternity leave. That just smacks a little bit of… well, of being hugely and grossly unfair; and to be actually complaining about it just demonstrates the same old obliviousness to the real world of which MPs are constantly being accused.

Of course, I’m a man so in today’s world it’s unthinkable for me to have any sort of opinion on something that doesn’t directly involve me – but if I was a woman, if I’d had to compromise during the first nine months of my maternity leave because I had less money coming in; and if I’d ended up going back to work early, because after nine months the money stopped and I simply couldn’t afford to stay off any longer… Well, if that was me, I think I’d be more than a little cheesed off at Ms Creasy bemoaning her situation.

There’s a secondary issue too, which is that presumably any stand in that the taxpayer funded would be selected either by the party or indeed quite possibly just by Ms Creasy herself. It’s fine to argue that your constituents won’t otherwise have a representative – but in that scenario, they’d end up with a representative that they did not elect, and whose appointment they had no say in.

I mean, imagine that. A politician being selected for an official position, without the electorate having any say in the matter whatsoever.

Unthinkable.