MANY people have two or more jobs to make ends meet.

There's the mum who works three days a week in a supermarket and another couple of evenings in a restaurant to pay the bills and feed and clothe her children.

There's the young man working on a zero hours contract in a sports shop trying to supplement what hours he gets by doing shifts in a pub to pay his way.

And there's the dad working full time on a minimum wage job doing delivery shifts with the local takeaway to save enough cash for a family holiday.

Then there's the MP whose £67, 000 salary isn't enough he has some directorships as well. But that's still not enough so he is prepared to take thousands of pounds from people he doesn't know to give them access to influential people.

This week two former Foreign Secretaries put the issue of MPs pay in to the spotlight by being accused of being prepared to accept cash from a firm which didn't exist in a classic sting operation.

Malcolm Rifkind gets £7000 a month from Unilever, £5000 from Alliance Medical, £4,500 from Continental Farmers Group and £12,000 a year for four hours work, four times a year from being on an advisory board for another firm LEK Consulting.

Jack Straw gets £60,000 a year from a firm of commodity traders and commands fees of as much as £10,000 a time for speeches.

Mr Rifkind said he isn't paid a salary and is self employed. I assume he doesn't think his £67,000 MP salary counts.

The tired old argument goes, and Mr Rifkind trotted it out again, that if we want to attract the highest calibre of people into politics, like from business then we need to pay them more or allow them to supplement the meagre £67,000 salary.

So who does survive on the equivalent of an MP's salary? A head teacher on the middle of the pay scale or a Police superintendent would be on similar. It puts them in the top 10% of earners in the UK but doesn't allow them the freedom or the time to take second jobs or jet around the world raking in cash for speeches.

So not many people earn more than our MPs, and that's just the backbenchers, Mr Straw and Mr Rifkind were paid considerably more during their lengthy careers as Secretaries of State.

Ed Miliband wants to ban second jobs for MPs which will get support from most hard working people in the country trying to make do on their one salary.

If you don't think you can live on the salary provided to represent people, you are out of touch and not fit for the job of MP and need to get out and get another job.