Correspondence: Pay rise for MLAs' staff
7 September 2020
Dear Editor,
A Stormont commitee made up of MLAs has voted to give their staff a 60 percent pay rise along with a 40 percent increase in office expenses. These staff, if not appointees, have often been found to be friends and relatives of MLAs. To have this post they do not need any qualifications or to even go through the rigorous recruitment process for civil servants.
Public opinion is important to MLAs and our political parties and if support is partisan, traditional all the better. They take our votes for granted. There are some things the public will never have any say in and this is a case in point. Governmental structures are set up to disempower people. The MLAs are insulting the working class people whose support they take for granted and the system, their system, allows them to get away with it!
People should remember that Stormont is about rule rather than franchise. Once you have voted them in they rule you and celebrate by sharing out the 'gold' between themselves and their lackies.
If you want change don't look to Stormont. Why on earth would a privileged caste agree to be denied their privileges? They are confident their wealth is secure and growing. It's time to stop accepting this. We must demand an end to the corruption of “our public representatives” - lets just call them our rulers. What masquarades as our “democracy” is shown up as just greed and hypocrisy and is held up by big lies like this one.
Better still lets govern ourselves instead and make equality and fairness of representatives pay a reality.
Yours
Insulted citizen