A Morsi moment

Is this a Morsi moment as the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, IPSA have unveiled their deliberations on MPs pay. 

At the height of the MPs expenses scandal, one of the important reforms was to make "independent" the awarding body who would recommend the extent of MPs pay increases. Having read their report I am amazed at the gulf between the public and the Executive, in this case our MPs and the mind set that those in the corridors of power have when their own interests are involved. 
The Public Sector have been under the cosh for some time and rightly so. There is no doubt the feather bedding of the conditions of employment by people who work in the Public Services, especially the very generous pension arrangement have to be brought into line with the situation the general public find themselves. The MPs are part of the Public Service, paid by taxpayers money. During the expenses scandal we found it difficult to equate what they do and everyone was shocked by the willingness to cream the expenses for all they were worth. 
MPs claim that their work is complex and vital and virtually impossible to quantify in terms of remuneration.
Do these people stand for Parliament as if it were a job and do they consider the pay before putting their name forward to the electorate. Would the millions of people who get by on the average salary (£24,000) and the many millions who earn far less, feel sympathy for the MP who claims his salary of £65,738 (another 14,000 if a committee chair and much more if a Minister), needs another £10,000 pa to meet their living costs.
The salary is of course only the tip of the iceberg.
Final Salary pensions (virtually unheard of these days), generous housing arrangements, resettlement payments, £56,250 winding up costs, benefits that include a "salary sacrifice" element, "child care", "substantial meals", and "office expenses" that are rail-roaded through the system.
Much of course depends on how we "value" the work an MP does and more to the point, what they do !!  What are these special circumstances that makes the work they do so special ? We see them debating in the House of Commons. They read a speech to an often near empty House, other MPs sitting around engrossed on their mobile phones, the Minister at work on paperwork seeming to pay little or no attention to the MP now speaking.
The MP also has their constituency work but one has to question what actually they can do, other than add weight to a constituents claim for justice with a letter with the House of Commons letterhead.  In fact they have no power and no responsibility and it is this fact that sets them apart from the professions they feel they should emulate with a comparative pay scale. The people they would like to mirror, (GPs,  Senior Management within the Public Services , Partners in a legal service),  all carry a great deal of responsibility for which they are judged, on a case by case, day by day performance which the MPs seem to have no comparable influence. 
In the survey carried out amongst MPs, the 1922 Committee and the Parliamentary Labour Party seem to be strange bedfellows although the percentages show the Tory's well ahead of the other parties in their rapacious claim for more money, this, even when one accepts that people in the Labour Party come from backgrounds of far lower financial security.     
The claim that one needs to pay higher salaries to substantiate drawing people in from the professions misses the point that the peoples representatives in Parliament do not reflect the People !!   We need people who would find £65.738, plus the superb benefits, more than enough. They would lend a voice in Parliament that is, with a very few exceptions missing in the public school event that is Parliament these days.
We miss the raucous oratory of the Attlee years when people entered Parliament through the Trade Union movement, knowing first hand the needs of the ordinary voter. This is sadly missing with the current intake of the professional political student having studied politics at University and joined the political class without having got their hands dirty. They have no concept of the ordinary concerns that "we" have. 

To add injury to injustice is the rise in the Queens purse of two million pounds now and another two million next year.  Have we gone mad, wrestling pennies from the poor, we are blind to their plight and are led to think that the Queen and her household, should be excluded from the effects of belt tightening which we now all are beginning to experience