Out of touch
The expenses scandal is starting to unravel, and I think you will find that very, very few MPs have nothing to hide. Some of the scandals will take just a wee bit of digging and lateral thought (or a simple tip-off), but the absence of anyone claiming the moral high ground speaks for itself.
Perhaps some fine upstanding citizen will report the lies, mendacity and theft of public funds to the Metropolitan Police and we can see squads of Black Marias taking the criminals away. Other bloggers have advocated firing squads or public flogging for MPs, but I advocate a simpler solution...
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(I was told off by a regular reader for using too many swear words. I have deliberately avoided using bad words in this post. Trust me, it was f'difficult)
They include a claim for £6,500 made by Gordon Brown to pay his brother for a cleaner for his Westminster flat.Three years half-share of a cleaner paid for by the tax payer. And in accordance with the rules. And only now that it is becoming public knowledge do they start to admit that the system might be broken, but that everything was done "within the rules".
Asked about claims MPs have been claiming one property is their "second home" under the allowance, but not for the purposes of council tax or capital gains tax, she [Harriet Harman] refused to give a "gut instinct judgement" on whether it was a breach of the rules.Well let me make it clear what your "gut instinct judgement" should be: if one of the employees of the Houses of Parliament fiddled their expenses in the way that you crowd were, they would be sacked and reported to the Police for fraud. Why should you and your colleagues be any different?
Perhaps some fine upstanding citizen will report the lies, mendacity and theft of public funds to the Metropolitan Police and we can see squads of Black Marias taking the criminals away. Other bloggers have advocated firing squads or public flogging for MPs, but I advocate a simpler solution...
- Full public disclosure of all expense claims as a matter of course (it works in the Scottish parliament), and
- Full publication of their Income Tax Returns
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(I was told off by a regular reader for using too many swear words. I have deliberately avoided using bad words in this post. Trust me, it was f'difficult)
8 comments:
Amidst all the shock and awe of politician's expenses, it makes you wonder how far down the chain this sort of thing has been going on in what is often referred to as the public sector. Surely this revelation provides an opportunity for all public sector agencies of government to be more open. All public sector organisations should make expenses incurred by their personnel available for public scrutiny.
I'm just sick of it all really and it is symptomatic of the whole of the public sector. Yes all of it. Why stop with MPs and the like (see last week's Sunday Times for the report on Baroness Uddin which is a shocker)and carry on with local government and other public funded gravy trains...
In a few weeks time I am going to have to pay a substantial amount of money to HMRC because my dead parents had the audacity to save money which they worked very hard for and left for their children and grandchildren. They weren't millionaires, investment bankers, royalty, landed gentry or premier league footballers. They were 'working class'. Yes. They have already paid tax on it about four times and now we have to hand it over to pay for Gordon Brown's brother's cleaner and Jacqui Smith's porno-smut (and the armed security for her sister). No need to get the violins out for me. There are many other people (despite what the government say) in the same boat and many in an even worse boat.
The next time someone says "oooh, I don't mind paying some more tax for schools and hospitals" I will poke them in the eye. Bring back the swearing Angus, the more the fing better.
How according to Mr Brown is "the system" only now wrong when we find out about it???
At long last the Police have been called to the House of Commons over the expenses. To ehhh... find out who leaked the figures to the press. You could not make it up !
Just look at the workers within the public sector. How many courses, team meetings, lunches etc etc do they get to go on. It amazes me sometimes how they ever manage to get anything done but that is because there is about 10 for every real full time job, they just take it in turns to do it in between sick leave, stress leave, flexi-time, corrupt time and general time wasting.
They are a bunch of useless wasters.
Your swearing doesn't bother me in the slightest. How else can you describe the public sector or our politicians??
There is an upside to all these expense claims, I can now indulge my obsession in KitKats, pay my brother £6,500 to water my plants and the inland revenue cant say this is not a legitimate expense.
I think there needs to be a new definition of the word 'expenses' as it is synonymous with the term 'creative accounting'
The new definition should be something like, 'to maximise and profit from allowances paid as a perk of the job'
It has to said though why are MP's being targeted, I do not not of any allowance system that is not properly managed that is not open to abuse, and historically, and I'm sure it is the same now, reporters have been at the forefront of such 'creative accounting' isn't this the Pot calling the Kettle Black?
Our wrath at what the MP's have been up to is also driven by jealousy, because we don't get a chance to access such an allowance scheme. Given a chance of such a scheme 99% of us would be fiddling, I mean maximising it.
If you want to look at a more local waste of taxpayers money, you've only got to look at ConCom broadband. How many millions of pounds thrown at a service that doesn't work and every other part of the civilised world would find acceptable?
How many days now have parts of North Uist and Berneray been without it? How many businesses that depend or rely on broadband have been affected?
How many of these - and, it is being tracked, they won't be the first - will throw in the towel and relocate to the mainland? And bear in mind that most such businesses are run by people in the 20-40 age range, in other words the "having children" age range?
Where are our elected representatives in all this? They'd be kicking up a fuss if Stornoway was without essential supply services such as electricity and water for this long.
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