Member's means

Many MPs have second jobs eg North East Somerset MP Jacob Rees-Mogg received around £132,000 in the year to August from his company Somerset Capital Management. The Conservative MP works 35 hours a month in return for the cash...(story here). As a matter of principle shouldn't we expect MPs to work full time for their constituency? Mr Rees-Mogg for example has time and energy that he could direct into working for voters in his constituency that he is directing elsewhere. Surely there are enough problems and issues to work on in his constituency, the SW region, the country, the EU and the world to keep this (and other) representatives busy for a lifetime! Docking some pay from MPs with second jobs is perhaps missing the point - they should not have these jobs whilst being an MP to begin with, so make it a rule that they cant.

Effective Labour Shadow Cabinet?

I think its becoming pretty clear that Ed Miliband and his shadow cabinet are not performing well and not making an impact as an effective opposition (click image to enlarge). Why for instance did they not strongly make the point that the recent much bigger than expected economic growth figures are a result of Labour's policies and action whilst Alistair Darling was Chancellor? I'm not an economist but I know a bit about politics, decision making and complex systems, which includes economies. Its crystal clear that this coalition government cant possibly be responsible for the last set of growth figures because they've simply not been in power anything like long enough to have any effect.

There is a time lag between government economic policy/action and effects appearing so we'll only begin to see the impacts of the coalition government on growth as more months and years go by. We are however seeing the effects of the previous Labour government now. Labour's weak shadow treasury team failed to strongly point this out, made only lame comments and tended to talk down the economy. Ed Miliband and the shadow cabinet failed to go with what is both the truth and the best political strategy/tactic and take the credit for the growth figures - so maybe former Labour cabinet member Jack Straw was right when he said that a third of the new shadow cabinet is incapable - maybe its more than a third!