General Chat

SW10 aka Chelsea in my case.

Here we are SW10 aka West Brompton

Here is a jolly super collection which will fit into a £ 25K London housing allowance. Just.
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/West-Brompton/1-bed-flats.html

one does indeed
:-D

I have no idea why one has to quote SW10,
I live in SW10 and I wish I had a salary of £85K. plus a super expense allowance.

Rambling Rose - I moved down here in 1988 to a place called Hayes just a few miles from Bromley town centre, back then, before I bought a town house in the area, I rented a 3 bedroom semi-detached house situated in a quiet cul-de-sac, dining room, kitchen, 2 bathrooms, and a through lounge with French doors onto the patio and large rear garden, the garden backed on to the golf course - £600 per calendar month was my rent back then :-)

I love the Bromley and the areas around it - West Wickham, Hayes, Biggin Hill, Chiselhurst, Petts Wood, Beckenham, and Orpington - when I sold my town house, because of my health, I moved to a sheltered housing scheme in a village near Orpington.

Some lovely houses in all those areas, nice amenities, good transport links and quite a few excellent state and private schools :-)

Goodbye Minister & may your feet go with you!

I was thinking of one of the SE postcodes where a friend lives OFITG, 'silly money' to rent, but certainly not outside what could be afforded. for instance there is a 3 bedroomed house near where my friend lives £2100 per cal month.

I used to work in Bromley, some very nice houses there :-)

Rambling Rose - there are many MP's who live in the Home Counties, including several government ministers, they manage to travel to Central London from where they live, personally I see no reason why any junior minister or ordinary MP needs to live in Central London.

I believe this MP was entitled to claim an allowance of £27,875 per year towards the cost of renting a property, that is roughly £2,230 per calendar month or roughly £535 per week.

I know for a fact, that for that kind of money over here in some of the more desirable areas of Bromley in Kent, you can rent some very nice detached houses, houses many could only dream of living in - for example:-

You could rent a detached house located on a quiet residential road close to Bromley town centre for £2,250 per calendar month, a property that has 4 double bedrooms, 2 with en-suits, a modern family bathroom, 2 reception rooms, office, and utility room, a large rear garden, and Central London is only 25/30 minutes by train.

Or you could rent a detached house in a quiet area of West Wickham in Kent for £2,200 per calendar month, a property that has a master bedroom with en-suite bathroom, 3 further double bedrooms, a family bathroom, a large kitchen with a conservatory come breakfast room, large rear garden, a 30 foot through lounge with access to the garden and patio, a separate study, - again it is only 20/30 minutes by train to Central London.

Is he saying he needs to live in Central London to have a family life :-S

I don't see why he has to live in an SW postcode Rollo? How many people have the luxury of living that close to work? under an hour commute is reasonable, and that covers postcodes he could afford, but of course it might not give him the type of property he wants... the same is true for many people who work in London.

RolloTheRed - I will ignore your disparaging comments about me, for your information OFITG does not live on another planet nor is he extremely ill informed about the cost of living anywhere in London.

During my existence "on planet earth" I have had several acquaintances who were members of the House of Commons or the House of Lords - I know how much of a struggle life was for them - what is it they say "I'm all right Jack, pull up the ladder" ;-)

To make things even more difficult for him to make ends meet, six months after he became the MP for Boston and Skegness in 2001, he bought a large house in Putney, South London, for £650,000, and from 2001 to 2009, the mortgage interest was paid by the taxpayer - during that period it is estimated that he claimed nearly £2,000 a month to cover the the mortgage.

After the expenses scandal of 2009, new rules were introduced and as a result, he could no longer claim for the mortgage interest on his Putney house, under the new rules because his constituency house was designated as his main home he could only claim for the rent of a property in London.

Soon after the new rules were introduced, he sold his Putney house for £1,187,500 in the autumn of 2010 - he made more than £500,000 from the sale of it.

Apart from being a full-time MP, he also held other jobs in the private sector, these included being a strategic adviser to Circle Healthcare, an independent medical care provider, at a salary of £50,000 a year. In February 2012, he was forced to apologise for failing to declare this when he spoke in favour of the NHS shake-up. However, when he he was appointed as a minister at the Foreign Office in September 2012 - he resigned from his Circle Healthcare role.

He was also the chairman of chartered surveyors Mortlock Simmonds, which required about 10 hours work a month, for which he was paid £800 a month.

I am probably being cynical when I say, because you can no longer manipulate the system to meet your needs - what you do is quit, maybe that is why so many MP's are standing down at the next General Election ;-)

I believe that from his wages he has to pay any office staff he employs, so the 25.000 he could be paying his wife would some out of his wages.

Whilst 89.000+ seems to us a large wage. Maybe if we paid them a more realistic wage for representing us, and they were not allowed to take jobs outside of Parliament, they would see it as a real job and not make ridiculous expenses claims etc.

Also 25.000 for any place in London (around 480.00 pw) can be considered a very small amount. I think the average nowadays for private renting is about £500.00+ pw in the private sector. And even moving to the 'burbs' in some areas 480.pw would be pushing it.

Strange that you've all picked up on the costs. The way i'd read it was that he didn't want to relocate his family to London, but still wanted to spend more time with them while the children were still young.

He thought that he probably would be re-elected next year, but assuming he served the full term, his eldest would be 21 and likely to have left home. He'd have missed most of her childhood.

Good for him, I say!

poor man - if anyone would like to contribute to a fund for him I'll be willing to co-ordinate it - it's the least we can do - don't know how I'll sleep tonight with all the worry

Rollo
I'm fully aware of the cost of living in London. I live there.

He lost my sympathy when he said he wasn't prepared to live outside London and commute.
He could easily have taken a house in the suburbs where rents are lower and used public transport like the rest of us.The trains run well into the night and start again in the early hours of the morning
He wasn't representing his constituency very well if he wasn't prepared to travel there some of the time.

do you think we should have a whip round for this poor MP

mmm maybe not :-D :-D :-D

It is easy to make an alternative point without being disrespectful to other contributors to the thread.

MPs and ministers are elected to represent their constituency in parliament. They cannot do that properly commuting back and forth to a constituency hours away neither is it practical from a bedsit in Morden. They need to be living fairly close to Parliament. As they are not guests of HMP it seems reasonable that their families should be with them.

Parliament is in a pricey part of London and total earnings of £90-150K are barely going to cover it for a bachelor let alone a family. The current expenses regime is wildly unrealistic.

The current chosen option of the Tories is to prefer wealthy MPs with their own private incomes ... right back to where we were in 1914. I suppose another option would be to have MPs outside the house selling the Big Issue.

If MPs are not properly funded then any democracy is sham - just look at the pork barrel politics that passes for democracy in the USA. The special interest list for UK MPs is already bad enough denying funding will just make it worse.

OFITG obviously lives on another planet or is extremely ill informed about the cost of living in London SW postal code..

btw Mr Simmonds will be able to at least double his income outside of parliament.

Some posh families groan under the weight of privilege.

Just shows how out of touch they are.