Danny Finkelstein seems set on winding Guido up (again). Having fought a long media campaign against the Tories making the case for lower taxes in The Times, on Newsnight and via text messages to George Osborne,  he is now arguing for higher pay for MPs to make up for their reduced future opportunities to fiddle their expenses.

MPs’ expenses alone almost match average mean earnings, in fact after tax is deducted, MPs’ tax-free perks alone exceed average (net) mean earnings.  Their salaries are triple what the average voter / taxpayer earns, add in their perks and it is quadruple what the average voter / taxpayer earns.  The chart above (source) shows income distribution in Britain.  See how MPs are way over-paid already.

The “mob” referred to last night in his set-to* with Kelvin MacKenzie on Newsnight might not be part of the metropolitan media class struggling to get by on six figures, but they know self-serving bullshit when they see it.  MPs don’t deserve the salaries they are actually on, there can be no question of them deserving a pay rise.  Unemployment is above two million, there are plenty of better qualified people available who would do a better job than the parasitic, all-party, interchangeable professional political class currently in control of Westminster.  Not a single penny more for the pigs.

*Worth watching from 10 minutes in: Kelvin telling it like it is about Alastair Darling’s “quasi-criminality”…