I've said it before, but it is worth repeating: pay peanuts and get, well, you know the rest.

I'm talking of our MPs, of course, and the continuing farrago that is their pay and perks.

The announcement Thursday that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) is going ahead with its recommendation that MPs should receive a pay rise of 11 per cent was a given. having indicated that such a measure was their independent view then the esteem body set up in the wake of the MPs' expenses scandal was unlikely to then change direction just to avoid an unpopular decision.

Cue loud protestations from all party leaders and a threat from the Prime Minister to disband IPSA if they are so foolish as to insist that MPs are paid what they should be worth ( notice I didn't say what they are worth) .

The PM is of course only being sensible for politician that wants to get re- elected in a year or so's time. mr Cameron knows that IPSA is correct in their calculations that MPs are paid too little for the task at hand, at least not enough to attract the quality of brain power need to run the nation in a time of economical crisis. But he also knows that his opposite number, Ed Miliband, will, and nice already has, said he would cancel any such pay rise, even if that flies in the face of the legally- binding independence of IPSA created to avoid any such interference. How that last part must have sounded sensible when IPSA was created, to ensure that MPs could never be accused of setting their own pay level again. How galling that instead of keeping pay down, IPSA have done as they were told and weighed up the needs and requirements of what being an MP actually means, looked at the going rate for people work in comparable roles and by adjusting pension rights and allowances come up with a formula thats's more pay in MPs' pockets but at no extra cost to the nation.

What's more, the pay rises wont kick in until 2015. Seems fair to me, but then again I don't have to win votes.

Quite who IPSA compared MPs with I'm not certain. Certainly at £75,000 a year, the proposed new annual salary, MPs would be earning less than a head teacher of a reasonably sized school, a senior police officer, doctors and managers of large supermarkets. But then again they only have the country to run.

It's par for the course, of course, that anyone in public life, especially those paid from the public purse, can expect howls of protest over their salaries. We simply can't stomach the chief executives of water companies, power firms, railways, not to mention banks earning big bucks. Fine if they are a football player, when fans howl for the chairman to find £175,000 a week let alone £75,000 a year, but industry, commerce, government, forget it. Pay them tuppence and they should be grateful, seems to be the standard reaction.

Some will say that we should pay MPs more if they performed better. But that is the reasoning of nose-cutting-to-spite. When your football team is doing badly it usually means you need to stump up and buy better players on bigger payments. When your nation is not fairing so go then the same economic reasoning surely applies: splash out and get better brains.

It won't happen though. IPSA will push through their pay rise, MPs will on the whole reject it, no doubt through gritted teeth, and the PM will promise to find a better way of working all this out sometime after the election; an election where the field of candidates will, with some honourable local exceptions, be poor to middling.

It's the economics of the House alright, the Mad House.