Friday, February 26, 2010

Occupational overpayment...

I see those poor MEPs are cutting back and making ends meet, sacrificing personal gain for themselves in the finacial crisis: unaffected by last month's cries of "scandalous" they proceeded to approve for themselves an extra 1,500 euros a month in allowances to cover staff costs.* Oh "just" staff costs, no worries, they need that: they only got EUR200,000 for this before...plus about EUR50,000 for office costs (non staff). Oh, and plus the +/- EUR300 a day they get just for turning up**...all on top of their EUR92,000 salary (not forgetting the mega pension and cosy inflated travel expenses). Oh, and I nearly forgot: they all pay a special low tax rate, and get most of their insurances paid...and finally (but certainly not last or least!) and highlighted last year: we have the "real expenses scandal" that "MEPs can claim hundreds of thousands of pounds each year in expenses – without showing a single receipt".


* the salary was standardised last year to stop the whole range of different - in each country - salaries, so I wouldn't mind betting this new allowance is the sweetener to those MEPs that would have lost out in the new salary scale.

** MEPs "can sign in 10 pm in the evening and 7 am in the morning and receive 2 days' daily allowance without having taken part in any meeting or other relevant parliamentary activity." (from link below)

Good list of all their goodies HERE.

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6 comments:

Paul said...

Span - don't know if you are checking your pages but I hope you weren't in Chile last week. And if you were I hope you are okay.

Span Ows said...

No, but close, and also a few days when I couldn't connect so a few days away from the Internet...very nice! And thanks for the thought! I have spoken to a friend in Santiago and it has been awful I think it is the 5th worse earthquake ever (for strength, not casualties that thankfully have been minimal!) He's old enough to remember the strongest earthquake ever in 1960.

Paul said...

Well I'm glad you're okay. Once I'd got over the initial shock (no pun intended) my first thought was you! That's because I asked you about Chile several hundred years ago when I was planning a trip there after you mentioned you'd been there.

Nothing much has changed in the U.K except the gap in the polls has shrunk even further.

Span Ows said...

Well it's still a nice place to visit! Funnily enough soem years i am there a few times, sometimes once and some years not at al. This year, despite the quake, will need at least one maybe two visits.

Re 2% margin and not much news... So I see! Now back in cloudy Spain. lots of news to catch up on although I see harpie is revealling labour's election strategy...nothing on policies, just try to raise the ghost of the nasty rich tories.

Span Ows said...

P.S. And thanks again!

Paul said...

Yes the Ashcroft, Cohen debate has got very nasty this past week.

I think Chris Huhme summed it up best for me on the Lib Dem's site when he said that somebody who cares enough to be part of the Government should also care enough to pay his taxes (I'm paraphrasing here).