Whenever politicians claim that they do a hard and stressful job, they should be forced to read this article from Peter Preston in The Guardian:
“Time and motion, working by stopwatch, would probably be amazed by how little of any political week is actually devoted to starting and running things. Presentation, presentation- with attendant delegation. A strain, to be sure: but to grind only because of the supposedly necessary dross. A New Deal on jobs? Somebody must have been spinning somewhere over Christmas. Fewer NHS auxiliaries? Doctors aren’t supposed to get sick, even in bleakest midwinter. But Asquith, you guess, would have let Sky TV go hang on such warm topics. As 2009 begins, ministers just go through the media motions. Hard, perhaps. But work, in any real sense? Remember the deserted wasteland of Whitehall last week, and ask the question yourself.
Compared to the conflict in Gaza, where people on both sides have suffered, even here at home as business after business goes under, where ordinary people face the fear of unemployment and also face the serious threat of insolvency, being a career politician, a Member of Parliament, is relatively easy and well paid. Unlike most people, if they lose their seats, they will receive a state pension that will be protected at a time when many others are losing theirs.