Monday, 8 December 2014
They don't get it, do they?
Politicians just don't get it, do they? OK, so Alex Salmond is very magnanimously going to donate one of his salaries to charity if he succeeds in becoming an MP in addition to being an MSP next year. Big deal. The real problem with Alex and others like him, such as Cara Hilton (MSP and Fife Councillor), is that they are hogging two jobs when a lot of people can't even get one. They are also not giving the best service to the people they represent, who deserve an MSP who is not also an MP or a councillor. We want full-time elected representatives, not part-timers dividing their time between Holyrood and Westminster or Holyrood and a local council. If Salmond manages to get elected to Westminster he should immediately resign his Holyrood seat and it's high time Hilton resigned her position on Fife council. Her Labour colleague Alex Rowley did so as soon as he won his Cowdenbeath Holyrood seat. Perhaps Hilton is not as confident as Rowley about retaining her seat in 2016. Calton would have thought she was pretty safe but, it has to be said, Dunfermline has swung every which way but Tory in the last few Holyrood elections. Perhaps 2016 will be James Reekie's year. Oh hang on ... Calton has just spotted a pig flying over the other side of the Forth.
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Being an MP was never a full time job - or no MP would ever have been able to take on the fairly demanding job of being a Minister of the Crown..
ReplyDeleteSome of my friends believe that is a sufficient conflict of interest to require something like the American system - where the Chief Minister ( whatever he is called) is directly elected and appoints his own assistants but MPs , MSPs et Al remain solely and wholly representatives of their electors.
When government was much smaller, it was once the custom that an MP who was invited to join the government would apply for the Chiltern Hundreds or Manor of Northstead ( effectively resign). He would then offer himself for re-election by his constituents who would know that, as a government ministister, he had to prefer the interests of the government above those of his constituents. A wholesome discipline, I think, but lost like much else around the time of the Great War.