Public relations victory of the week

After one Tory MEP told Americans that the NHS is shit (clue: it isn't), and another millionaire MP told someone on film that MPs were treated 'like shit' and lived on 'rations', here's another headache for millionaire man of the people David Cameron: his rich South Staffordshire MP, Patrick Cormack, has called for MPs to be paid £130,000.

This is the man who, rumour has it, is so safe in bourgeois South Staffs that his canvassing consists of leading a cart horse festooned with posters along the high street. He is also a useless, smug, arrogant, bumptious Bufton Tufton.

His colleague Douglas Hogg, of moat-cleaning-at-taxpayers'-expense fame, wants MPs to earn £100,000 + expenses because

the current MPs' salary was "so low in absolute and relative terms" that members of the professional and business classes would be deterred from entering parliament.

MPs earn £64,000 plus expenses.

The average wage in the UK is £23,000.

Scrap Scrap Scrap

Brilliant. Ian Gibson, the brilliant, troublemaking MP for Norwich has resigned his seat to trigger a bye-election. Hope he runs as an independent socialist and wins.