£7,000 wage hike?
When I reported back in February 2008, that MLAs could be in line for a 16% pay rise, I was criticised by some politicians for being premature and inaccurate. In the succeeding weeks it became clear that the body which recommends MLA wage rates, the SSRB, had dropped its grading of our Assembly members from being worth 82% of an MP down to just 75% of an MP.
However I notice in the Belfast Telegraph's analysis of the Assembly Commission's proposed that the uplift could amount to 17%. So maybe I was underestimating!
Sinn Fein has already come out against the increase, but the problem for the politicians is that there will never be a good time so far as the public is concerned for such a rise. In the meantime, the MLAs will fall further and further behind their counterparts in Scotland and Wales (never mind the 100,000 euros TDs get).
That's why most parties take the line that they shouldn't vote on their own pay - so it puts the blame for any rise on to an unelected review body. One alternative approach, given the large number of politicians we have per capita, would be to keep the Stormont total wage bill much the same but reduce the overall number of MLAs - meaning that the individual surviving politicians would take a greater piece of the pie.
Checking back on my archive to find the original salary story, I came across this entry on the local fall out from the revelations about the Tory MP Derek Conway employing his son. Like salaries, nepotism hasn't gone out of the news since then.
The new reveals that around a third of our MLAs still employ a family member. There's no sign of the Assembly Commission following the example of Sir Christopher Kelly in proposing a ban on family members. John O'Dowd told the Nolan show that other parties should follow Sinn Fein's example in employing workers centrally rather than individual politicians hiring their own nearest and dearest.
I'm 
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