It's getting busy around the trough. As private sector workers are expected to work 3 or 4 years longer in order to geta pension, and private sector workers are told they can retire at 60, we now find the most cossetted bunch of all back at the trough. The Time Online informs us MPs demand 22% pay rise as Brown offers public sector 2%. The article has several snippets that raise the hackle:

The MPs, whose salary is £59,095, are also demanding, in addition to the inflation-busting pay increase, an improved petrol allowance. Last year it was cut from 57.7p for the first 20,000 miles to 40p, in line with Inland Revenue rates.

Is it any surpise then that they don't squeal when petrol prices go up and the robber baron Gordon Brown pockets more tax... they don't even notice it.

The MPs argue that their salaries have fallen by 12 per cent against their public sector counterparts and 15 per cent in the private sector since they lost the right to set their own pay in 1994.

B*ll**ks. In the private sector pay may rise, but as a rule it is justified on improved productivity or promotion. GF has seen no improved productivity from government (indeed the continued growth of the civil service indicates the opposite), and the only promotion for most MPs is self-promotion.

Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Treasury spokesman, said: “This will be embarrassing for MPs. I could have earned a great deal more outside Parliament, but that is not what you go into politics for.”

Quite right. GF thinks such brazen, self-serving insensitivity is one of the marks of modern politics.

[File under: MP Salary]