cash for access/taking us for mugs

Not surprised to see Cameron rejecting Miliband`s "call to limit MPs` outside income".His leadership of the Tory party is under such extreme pressure from the right-wing back-benchers, any agreement from him to "rein in their extra-parliamentary activities" was never on the cards. No doubt, he will be spouting forth about the necessity for MPs to have experience of the real world, so that they can empathise with the needs of their constituents, and serve them more effectively. Cameron and the Tories frequently say things like this, because they take us for mugs.

    They expect us to believe their support for an increase in wages, when their so-called "long-term plan" is for a low-wage economy; they expect us to accept that they really are determined to end the "morally repugnant" tax avoidance, even though they have cut the workforce at HMRC by 20%, and their much-vaunted "Google tax" is only intended to raise £355m a year, and then, not until 2019; Tories even consider it likely that people living north of  the Midlands will vote for them because of their support for creating "northern powerhouses", despite the billions spent on London and the south-east in the last five years. Tories are still attacking Labour as the "borrowing party" because it borrowed £142.7bn in its thirteen years in office. Voters are too dumb, in their eyes, to remember that they have borrowed £157.5bn in their five years of coalition government.

         Now they suddenly care about good governance? 

         This isn`t the first time Miliband has called for MPs to be "banned from directorships and consultancies". Presumably, he realises, like the rest of us, that being on a British company`s board of directors in the 21st century, with agendas which include pay renumerations worthy of only one adjective - "obscene", dealings with accountants to discover new tax avoidance scams, discussions of "efficiency" which can only mean cutting jobs, and methods to maintain the "profit-at-all-costs-forget-ethics" ethos, is so far removed from the real world experiences of the average constituent, it is more of a hindrance to good governance than benefit.