Westminster is plagued with scandals every week and even day it seems lately but just what does it take to become an MP nowadays? –
Lets take the Owen Paterson scandal as an example
in one of the most viewed acts of government corruption seen in years. Tory MPs voted to kull the public standards watchdog after it found their colleague, Owen Paterson, guilty of breaking rules when he was lobbying for a firm that won hundreds of millions worth of COVID contracts (lets just guess he got a sales percentage).
Paterson would have received only a 30-day suspension from the Commons (but should have clearly been kicked out!) for committing a serious corruption of standards, but this mattered little to the government benches. The whole system had to go, they decided, to protect one of their own.
Indeed it was Prime Minister David Cameron in 2016 commiting to kick out corruption by setting up investigations led by none other than his newly-appointed UK Anti-Corruption Champion, Sir Eric Pickles MP (the same Pickles who heads the Grenfell investigation. A venue was setup and organisations were invited to discuss corruption in the UK – but clearly it seems they took the most profitable advice, because things have got even worse.
In 2021 Nicola Sturgeon raised claims of foul play and “Corruption at the heart of Westminster” when it turned out former attorney general Geoffrey Cox had been using his second job to offer legal advice from the heart of Westminster – facing claims he used his government office to conduct private business.
Or could it just all be the perks of a tidy job, can any of us imagine what it must be like to earn 84k for a Part Time job (most MPs seem to think of it as a part time job).
Jon Jones sums it up online by commenting: Imagine having a part-time job where you get £84,144 a year plus expenses, and you can drink alcohol?
Indeed if you open up the tweet you even get to see the subsidized menu and drinks list (paid for by us).
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