Imagine, dear reader do, taking on additional, paid work, carried out during the current working day, without clearing it with your main employer, and then that employer finds out.
LIkely subsequent scenario? Yup, that's it, jotters time.
Unless of course you happen to be an MP. Under current rules, MPs are allowed to make money on the side as long as they declare the range of income obtained (between £xxxx and £yyy) in the register of interests.
But now, mainly to fuck up the Tories admittedly, senior Labour minsters are calling for all outside work to be banned for MPs. But, obviously they've caught one of their own in the net.
Adam Ingram, who resigned his minister post at the MOD to spend more time with his directorships and consultancies told The Herald "If you don't have a hinterland, I don't think you're living in the real world."
Now, this is a creative variation on the traditional defence of outside work, i.e. "being the director of a large company with extensive business links with Whitehall, keeps me in touch with the real world."
I've yet to read of a MP electing to work the weekend night shift portering at their local A&E as a way of keeping in touch with the real world, but I live in hope.
The good Adam, BTW, counts as part of his own personal hinterland, a consultancy role with IT firm EDS. The company website proudly notes this very good bit of business:
"Ministry of Defence (MOD) – EDS has served military and secure government clients for more than 30 years. EDS is prime contractor on many of the MOD's major IT programmes. Also, as prime contractor in the ATLAS consortium, EDS is central to the successful delivery of the Defence Information Infrastructure (Future) (DII(f)). DII(f) is a major contract running over ten years and will replace numerous individual information systems throughout the MoD with a single more efficient information infrastructure."
A programme of work that must make Adam's trips to the hinterland very productive for all concerned.
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