The trouble with renting

 The news is confusing me.

Junior doctors are being paid about £25-£26k a year after five years at medical school and stay on that salary until they complete further training to become a registrar, when they can earn between £33k to £44k per year.  They are still called 'junior' doctors because only consultants get to say that they are grown ups. After 19 years of training a consultant could be earning £119k.  That means that the person removing your appendix could be being paid less than the person filling your Tesco order.

What?

How is that possible?

I asked the Long Suffering Husband. He shrugged his shoulders.  He didn't know. He thought they should be paid more but he had seen the News too and he didn't think they should get a 35% pay rise. 

'Where is the money going to come from?' he asked earnestly.

I don't know but I think public finance is different from our bank accounts. I wonder what have they spend money on, though, because all public services have been underfunded to the point of collapse. I understand that how a government spends its money is a political choice and that conservatives like to think they are good at business and apply a business model to public services. Free healthcare, education, security are not things that sit well with their philosophy.

What confuses me, though, is that I thought the conservatives were all about meritocracy.  The brightest, the most hard working deserved the biggest rewards.

 Hello. 

Doctors.  

The best A levels, voluntary work, play an instrument, run marathons. Have you ever seen a bunch of smarter more dedicated people? Yes, I know they are all weirdos with no social skills but if its about grit and brains then there's no one to top them.   Then there's 5 years at Uni and more exams that they have to pay for.  

MPs, by contrast, just have to win a popularity contest and get a minimum of £84,144 a year.

'The problem,' I explained, patronisingly, to the LSH, 'Is that they haven't done any of the maintenance and now its all falling about around their ears.'

I got him onto a favourite subject of how young people don't know how to care for their homes. I'm sure this view has rubbed off from the golf club retirees but I indulge it every now and again, for the sake of scoring a political point.  

We talked about sweeping paths, emptying gutters, clearing drains and painting woodwork and then we moved onto cars. Service, MOT, checking the oil. He was very happy. I don't often listen to these conversations with my full attention.

'You see!' I said, triumphantly. 'If you do all those things then you don't have a big bill when the car stops working!'

He agreed.  

'So, now the government have a choice. Pay up or scrap it and get a new one.'

We agreed that the public probably weren't going to go for the scrapping it option. The beloved NHS, schools as free childcare and decent literacy/numeracy levels, and not living in a version of the Wild West were all freedoms people wouldn't want to give up. 

Then it hit me.

'Its not their house.  They are just renting. I know they are meant to do the maintenance but they can just leave it for the next poor tenant to do.'

Maybe that explains the horrible adverts Labour are doing at the moment. There are just some properties you wouldn't want to take on.