It’s the self-pity that gets me

Tory MP Andrew Rosindell: “I think there are people that quite like getting the extra £20 but maybe they don’t need it.”

Tory MP Andrew Rosindell on preventing MPs having a second job: “How can we possibly survive on £81,932 a year? What about our lifestyle??”

Hmm. The pitfalls of the internet, eh? Rosindell, it appears, definitely said the former, which I find insulting and patronising enough in itself, but the latter? My in depth investigations (Google) reveal this to be the actual quote: “I know some of my colleagues have jobs and outside work that they do and it means them having to give up [roles] and changing their lifestyle.” Which is all well and good. Or is it?

It’s the lifestyle bit that exercises me. Now I have never come close to earning £81,932 in a three-year period, never mind a single calendar year. I always felt I was underpaid and undervalued for what I did when I worked in the civil service, but I also recognised that I had neither the skills or qualifications to earn more money anywhere else. For all that, my modest, well below the average salary meant that we were relatively comfortable, able to afford the basics PLUS. I was certainly better off then than I was as a child when my mum struggled to put bread on the table (although so far as I can tell she always managed it for me, if not for herself). Back in the late 1960s, I reckon an extra few quid a week would have made a life-changing difference to my mum because Family Allowance, which later turned into Child Benefit, applied only for the second child upwards and there was nothing at all for lone parents.

Maybe Rosindell is right and “some people quite like getting the extra £20 (UC)” but when he says “maybe they don’t need it”, then what can he mean?

Does Rosindell actually need £81,932 in order to feed his family and keep them warm, or could he manage, as I did, on less than a third of this? Or should we be saying “I think there are MPs what quite like getting £81.932 but maybe they don’t need it”? I know nothing about Rosindell, but maybe he might scale back on the car he drives, have more modest holidays, send his children to state schools (he may already do this but I’ll bet there are plenty of MPs who use their salaries to pay for elite private schooling) and eat sliced white bread instead of sour dough?

When he bemoans the likelihood that colleagues may need to “(change) their lifestyle”, he means to have a less luxurious one. One horse instead of two, perhaps, and roll ups instead of Marlboros. It’s the self-pity that gets me.