A report in the Guardian 'headlines' that:
"Third of MPs say they considered quitting over long hours in Commons.", with a sub-heading: "Mumsnet poll show parliamentarians lament late nights spent voting on legislation and say the system is still not family friendly."
Where to start?
1. If a job is accepted without fully investigating the 'up' side and the 'down' side, then that person only has him/herself to blame.
2. Women have a choice in life that men generally do not, namely to pursue a career or raise a family.
3. Of the 101 MPs surveyed, were these new MPs, veteran MPs, all female or a fair section of all 'classes'?
4. Harriet Harman would, it seems, like a three-day week - and no doubt wants a pay rise to accompany that?
5. Perhaps if politicians decided that it was not necessary for them to control every aspect of our lives, really did devolve the responsibility for much of our daily lives to us and local authorities, perhaps they would indeed only need to work three days a week, if that - and take a bloody pay (and property) cut into the bargain.
And if that sounds chauvanistic to anyone, especially female MPs - tough! Life is tough and the first lesson learnt is that invariably one cannot have one's cake and eat it!
5 comments:
Long hours? Doing what precisely?
I wish they'd all quit or go on strike. Then the country would see how worthless and unnecessary these people are.
They should work MY HOURS, self employed for little reward. I'd love to earn what they're earning with expenses.
The introduction of "family friendly" hours was claimed as "modernisation" by the Blair Babes - those Stepford wives of the Labour Party. In fact, it makes the government's life much easier by curtailing hours of debate and making it extremely difficult to get any revision of bad Bills in the Commons.
I was in a Lords' Committee Room when the bell went for the adjournment of the Commons. The redoubtable Lord Stoddart of Swindon (Old Labour) was our chairman. "That's it" he said "They've all gone home in time to put the babies to bed. There's nobody minding the shop now"
TBF: Exactly!
jic: Hopefully we can arrange for them to quit - forcibly!
Sue: Agreed, I know how hard you work.
ES: Re the wish for shorter hours: Exactly, yet another form of censorship.
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