So what could parliamentarians achieve today by not doing a lot? The first thing is that they could stop meddling in local affairs (and with a bit of legislation, kill the quangos and give power to elected bodies). They could stop inventing new laws that are covered by existing ones. They could evaluate the extra-policiary bodies and the privatised policiary bodies, and clip their wings or kill them off. They could even make the police obey the law. The reality is that if government interfered less, it would achieve more, because it would only be debating real and relevant concerns.

BTW I am not convinced that MPs should spend x hours per week on casework. The fact that conscientious individuals spend time face to face with constituents or writing letters on their behalf is a symptom of centralisation; most of the problems in an MP’s post box shouldn’t be there and should be resolved by councillors (in extremis) or government officials or voluntary bodies. Thus an imperative for all MPs should be to create services that reduce their casework.

It would appear many Labour MPs have not had a career before entering politics and noone wants to employ them for their advice- only their contacts gained as a minister .

“Mr Gove has been scrupulous about not talking about educashun in his Times columns. But he appears to have dropped his guard in Scotland on Sunday and Building mag. Will he now repay the dosh received?”

Not a red card offence somehow.

Either way, that’s still less incentive for a second job.

I have two problems with second jobs:

1) the time required on the side to work

2) the potential conflict of interest and outside influence.

In what sense is writing articles for the Times “scandalous”?

What about the fact he broke internal party rules?

Over-shadowed? You are joking I presume.

“The disclosure of outside interests is more likely to affect the Tories. ”

Because Labour MPs will be revealed as having no value in the private sector?

Personally, I’m more concerned about the fact that MPs have time to have second jobs at all when their first job is funded by us

But where does this leave ministers? If it is accepted as an article of faith that the job of an MP is so all consuming that there is no time to spend an hour a week writing a column in the Times, how on earth can they find the time to run departments?

Still, your interventions on LibCon are entertaining! Don’t give up the day job as the head of cleaning services UK PLC though!

Of course the biggest scandal is the jobs taken *later* by ex-ministers with firms with whom they previously had dealings.

The Tories did it in the 90′s and Labour are doing it now.

Not that the Tories are not (or will not end up) as crooked as New Labour. I am just feeling rather unexcited about this upcoming “scandal”. You may be barking up the wrong tree.

That’s an interesting point – the DT did seem to play down BoJo’s expenses.
Fortunately we do have more than one newspaper, and generally there is nothing they like more than doing each other over, so I am not too worried about that.

At least Gove and BoJo write there own stuff.
I loathe the ghost-written platitude-stuffed articles which appear supposedly written by ministers.

Anyway, as Cameron is stopping cabinet second jobs we won’t have to worry about any of this soon enough.

Give me a f*cking break.
You haven’t swallowed the “no cuts under Labour” bollocks, surely?

The money comes from News Corp. How would it otherwise put kids through school?
Though, as Gove will pay 40% tax on it, it does in fact put kids through school!
Good news all round then!

As for the “shittiness”, as you are not paying for them yourself I would let the Times editor worry about that.

It gives rise to conflict of interest cases where the paper might hold off from holding its own journalists to account. I’m not keen on politicians having outside journalistic interests – more ambivalent on second jobs, where it’s a matter of time and money and conflict of interest more than hard and fast rules. I don’t think many people are arguing that the merger of politics and journalism has been good for either, frankly.

£1,250 an hour for shitty articles is a scandal. That money could put some kids through school, which is, ironically, something Gove and his scum lot will cut down on.