UK MPs look out for themselves

The UK is deep in recession. There has been a record drop in wages, and household living standards have dropped by almost 2% in the last quarter. So naturally, British MPs are giving themselves a £10,000 a year pay rise.

If you wanted to paint a picture of a greedy elite out for themselves and utterly unconcerned with the people they purport to represent, you couldn't do any better. What next? A joint press release telling people to eat cake?

UK MPs are underpaid, in that their salaries are clearly not enough to prevent them from behaving corruptly (though that said, the real problem is that they are looking at the 1% and 0.1% above them, rather than the 95% below). But a recession when people are struggling is not the time to fix that. Instead, this move will simply further delegitimise their Parliament, and politics in general.