Do we want politicians to be busy, actually?
Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday
Given the size of his salary, and of his barrage-balloon ego, it was of course great fun to see John Prescott exposed at his croquet, when he should have been working.
It is his own insistence that he is such a hard-working dedicated fellow that makes him now look such a greedy fool.
But do we really want these people working too hard? Mr Prescott's activities, when he gets round to them in between croquet and sexual harassment, are all deeply damaging to the country. And, if only he paid for it himself and worked for a salary more suited to his real abilities, I'd be only too glad if he spent most of his day playing darts, or miniature golf, or Elephant Polo (yes, it really does exist), or anything, really.
I am always baffled at the annual complaint that MPs take too much holiday. Almost all the Bills they pass do much more harm than good, and they are useless at questioning the executive. Far better, surely to ensure that they stay away as long as possible.
Actually, the whole idea of paid professional politicians is suspect and wrong. I suppose you might make out a case for a couple of dozen full-time salaried ministers, though it is a mystery to me what it is they do all day, and I suspect that if most of them were sacked tomorrow nobody would notice the difference. Like so much alleged 'work' in the public sector, it’s all meetings and business-class travel, expanding to fill the time allotted to them.
What we need instead is a scheme to allow proper people, bricklayers, train drivers, schoolteachers, small businessmen and women, experienced parents, for example to become part-time MPs, paid no more than the salaries they would normally get during a few weeks a year but provided with excellent research and secretarial staff so that they could really examine the rubbish the government is always trying to slip through Parliament.
One or two might make it to ministerial rank, but the rest would get their rewards out of serving their country.