I was asked to take part in that survey, and answered that question with the ‘don’t know’ option.

At the time I did wonder what they were trying to find out. My guess is that most people went for an instinctive choice, but if they were given more information results would be different. i.e. I suspect party loyalties would overwhelm. I also suspect many people who asnwered that question tried to guess which party each candidate was a member of, and then answered according to their own party preference- and its not that far fetched to suggest that people would guess that John was more likely to be the labour candidate based upon what his interests are described as.

There is a bit of an issue with the comparison.

It sounds a little odd to say – but “born” in the area has a different emotional attachement in people’s minds to “lives” in the area. It suggests, to people who were born in the area, that the person is like them.

Given the well established link between personal regard and similarity to one’s self – that is likely to have been a big factor on the results.

It is of course probably true right now that people want to dislike those with a lot more money than them – because of the “out of touch” messaging that has become very common about the present government.

But that seems to be a relatively limited phenomenon given the massively high levels of personal wealth of the average MP on being elected to Parliament compared to the average levels of personal wealth in the country as a whole. That alone seems to be pretty hard data suggesting a significant political advantage for those with lots of money.

Do we have stats on the average income of MPs before they are elected? Because I bet it’s above median.

Like Planeshift says, I doubt this is the deciding factor in many votes. Plus there are advantages to being rich (access to free time and resources) that might help your chances of being selected and elected. Also presumably wealth at least vaguely correlates with *talent*, and all jokes aside, MPs are probably more talented than average.

The two fictitious candidates seem to share a very similar profile.

How would it have been if:

John Burns, privately educated at Eton/Harrow/Rugby etc., guaranteed a place at Oxbridge, where he managed a Third in Politics. Worked briefly for his father’s trading firm in the City but benefits from a substantial trust fund which allowed him to become a Spad for the XXX Party.
Married into money
He quickly became PPS to a high profile Cabinet Minister and is now trawling for a safe seat.
Hoping to achieve high office, several lucrative directorships, a place on the lecture circuit and a seat in the House of Lords.
He has no idea how much the State Pension is or indeed the price of a carton of milk
and cares even less.

Every MP regardless of party or ideology is a 40% tax payer on just their MPs salary. Add in all the other goodies like £100,000 a year expense accounts, which a number of MPs dip into to employ their spouse, and so called consultancies, and other outside interests then many of them jump into the 45% tax band.

The number of kids going to private schools is less than 10%, yet the number of politicians kids going to private schools is quite high. Well over 80% on the tory side I believe. Add in the fact that if you have a nice safe seat which the vast majority are, you get a nice job for life.

Then you can retire with gold plated taxpayers pension, and with a bit of luck move into the Lords for some more welfare. No wonder there is a list as long as the M1 of people trying to become candidates. As Billy Connolly once said, “Anyone wanting to to be a politician should immediately be banned from being a politician.

I’m not sure I could tell you what any of the candidates for my constituency in the last general election earned (except to guess from other information that the Conservative probably had the lowest salary due to their age and occupation). Is it normal elsewhere in the country for candidates to publicise their salaries?

That’s ridiculous, but at the same time reassuring.

It shouldn’t impact on them whatsoever, but it does.

The opinion seems to be that somehow having money in this country precludes you from understanding the problems.

Freeman

given the disproportionate electoral success of rich people – I struggle to see how you arrive at that conclusion. The public seem to think rich people are disproportionately the best people to run the country – which means if they think they don’t understand the problems (and are out of touch), they don’t consider that as important as some other factor that makes them like rich representitives. (I don’t know what that factor or factors might be – but obviously there’s something – hence we have so many MPs with so much more wealth than the average Briton.)

I wish we had more MPs from all parties who had spent time on average salaries. If someone earns £28K as in the example given then it means that there is a greater chance that they have had to struggle running a car and a food budget, they may have had to find a place to rent since they didn’t have a deposit for a grossly over priced house. Someone who has lived like this is more in touch with the real issues that effect the day to day lives of most people in the country.

Someone who earns twice that will usually not know as well what it is like. As such former city traders and solicitors, I assume, would generally be more likely to focus on other issues.

I think that it would be better for the country if we had more MPs who had been unemployed at some point or who had worked a normal day to day job on low/average wages.

If John has been running his own software company for 20 years and is only paying himself a salary of 28,000, then he must be supplementing this with 250,000 quid of tax-avoiding dividends each year.

Bloody Tories.

Has Mr Portato any idea how much the typical self-employed programmer earns? Two of our friends who are both programmers and have lived fairly frugally for more than 25 years (two bicycles, no car, no foreign holidays) have now bought a small (one bedroom, one living room, kitchen and bathroom) first-floor flat in an unfashionable area of north London