Archive for May, 2009
Post of the day
Short to the point and well worth reading. (hat tip to anonymous on Old Holborn):
Vital Security explains why all these databases are a really bad idea, for anyone that hasn’t workedit out already.
And the award for not getting it…
Goes to Nadine Dorries supported by Iain Dale, though it was closely contested by Anthony Steen. I shall leave commentary on Ms Dorries amazing car crash of an outburst to others, as quite frankly I’m past caring about MPs not getting it. I’ve seen a couple that have understood what the problem is (but unfortunately only on TV at work whilst getting coffee so can’t name names) they’re news, the more common not getting it has had pretty much everything said. Though Ms Dorries claims about the Barclay brothers do take it to a whole new level (links to the interviews via Plato says and commentary by Behind blue eyes and of course the indomitable Leg Iron).
However it’s Iain’s fantastic supporting role that I’d like to consider, as it really is quite impressive. Apparently “the public” , amongst which from the phrasing I must assume Iain doesn’t count himself, aren’t in the mood to listen to the “very valid indeed” . Well as a member of the public I’ve been listening , listening quite lot in fact and I’ve heard very few valid points being made. Unlike Iain I do have to differ with the view expressed by the archbishop of Canterbury in that obviously the point hasn’t been made for if it had we’d not have the likes of Ms Dorries complaining about how beastly it all is, nor Mr Steen claiming we’re all just jealous. Sadly Iain doesn’t enlighten us as to what these very valid points are that we’re all ignoring, so I’ve no idea how valid they are or if they’re ones I myself have been ignoring or just haven’t heard. Perhaps he means some of Ms Dorries points such as how their tax free allowances have always been counted as part of the salary (which must suck for London MPs who don’t get the ACA), who knows it will have to remain a mystery.
To return to Iain he feels that we the public are somehow wrong to blame all MPs, as some of them are “totally blameless” and here he comes so close to understanding why we’re angy at all MPs but manages to swerve away from understanding at the last moment. For he goes on to say “the public regards them all as condoning a system which has been used to line their pockets.” , which according to Iain is down to the whips and the fees office encouraging them to view it as a top up salary (yep it’s that nasty mean system forcing MPs to fraudulently claim money again). So according to Iain the nasty mean system encouraged MPs to trough at our expense and Ms Dorries tells us that it has “always been known and has always been counted as part of an MP’s salary“, yet we are wrong to blame all of the MPs for condoning this system they all knew about yet somehow never managed to speak out against until the Telegraph had the audacity to point out that perhaps it stunk rather a bit. See it was that nasty system and everyone knew about it, it’s just us poor deluded public that think that claims were really only meant to be for expenses incurred by MPs in the course of their duties, tsk silly us. But dear dear Iain he’s prepared to give us some time to reconsider how we really feel about MPs either enriching themselves at our expense or keeping silent about their mates doing it, I mean how dare we expect our representatives to look after our interests and properly hold the system to account? Still as Iain puts it: “The public view it as wrong, so there’s little point in banging on about it at the moment.” so once we come to our sense I assume we’ll realise that it wasn’t actually wrong charging us for plasma TV’s, duck islands, false mortgages or anything else that could be slipped past the fees office.
Iain feels that it would be best all round if the politicians stayed quiet for a bit, presumably to let us the public calm down and remember how to tug our forelocks and doff our caps. Iain has gauged the public mood and determined that: “No one wants to hear from them. The public don’t want a running commentary. They don’t want to hear any politician defending the past, defending the status quo or feeling sorry for themselves.” This would make me, and statistically at least a few other people, No one – as I do want to hear from them. I want to hear from those that haven’t abused the system to know why they didn’t speak out before, I want to hear from the likes of Mr Steen so I know how little our representatives think of us and most of all I want to hear from the party leaders and the “blameless” MPs what they’re going to do to repair the damage they’ve allowed to occur after all everyone knew about it. He’s even wrong to say that I don’t want to hear them defending the past for if I as a member of the public only “view it as wrong” then I want to know why my view is incorrect. I want to hear them defend the status quo so that perhaps they can explain why we should ever trust them again and why bloody revolution isn’t our best choice. I even want to hear them feeling sorry for themselves, but that’s just because I’ve got a sick sense of humour, and it’s a long weekend and I’ve got some beer in.
I utterly fail to understand why at this time when we are more engaged with politics than we have been for years, Iain things it would be better if everyone just stopped talking about it. Is he hoping some exciting twist in celebrity apprentice get me out of here will distract us? Would the front pages talking about Baby P and missing Maddie do for that? Orperhaps we should be talking about the economy instead and the down grading of our national debt rating? After all we have a parliament that gets confused over simple expense claims, forgets when it’s paid off mortgages, so why on earth would we worry about our credit rating falling?
Just for the record I do think that MPs should have somewhere in London they can stay and that it should be reasonably furnished. But every item must be accounted for and when they leave politics it can all be sold at auction to recoup our money, the same goes for any property they buy with our money. They do have expenses that should be met and some of these are being lumped in with the actual abuses of the system as Dizzy observes. Though I would observe that for the rest of us if we used that sat nav for something other than work it would cease to be an expense and become a benefit in kind and taxable. I even think that they probably are somewhat underpaid, taking 4 years off work can really put a dent in your career and we want useful people in parliament, not just people who can afford 4 years out due to wealth or general uselessness. But none of that excuses the profligate abuse of the system by individual MPs that we’ve seen, nor the silence on the issue beforehand by “blameless” and decent MPs.
Which is why despite Iain wishing otherwise this blogger at least, and I expect many others, won’t be zipping it.
Here comes the new system same as the old system
I read about this in one of the free rags on my way home but don’t tend to trust those, but having now read it in the Telegraph it does in fact seem that the great answer to the problem of this terrible system which caused all of the trouble is…. a quango! of unelected unaccountable “independent regulators”! Independent regulators having worked so well in so many other fields, and wasn’t the fees office supposed to be independent? How can a government appointed regulator be any more independent than some nameless civil servants?
The speaker is to be made purely ceremonial destroying yet more of our history and tradition. Giving up more of parliament’s sovereignty and handing over more power to unelected unaccountable placemen. Who after all is going to hold this new body to account, the MPs who depend on it to have their expenses approved? And who’s going to appoint these regulators, the MPs who they’re meant to be regulating? How can this in anyway be an improvement? Burning our Money sums it up rather well, as this body can’t report to the government as then it’s not independent and the government was put in place to resolve issues with every other alternative. Unless of course we just get rid of parliament and perhaps hand our legislature over to Brussels?
What on earth is wrong with MPs accepting responsibility for their own actions, reporting their full expenses to the electorate they represent to audit as they see fit? The expenses system absolutely needs reform but hiving it off to another quango isn’t the answer. Transparency, accountability to the electorate and acceptance of individual responsibility for their actions by our representatives is. After all no-one (as far as we know) held a gun to any of their heads and forced them to make bogus claims. Let them be subject to the law as are the rest of us and let legal proceedings deal with those that have broken the law, and let the threat of that and full public audit of their accounts in future serve to keep them honest. Reduce and simplify what expenses are still needed (and I do accept that as in all jobs some expenses are required), but beyond that parliament should accept its responsibilities both individually and collectively.
The one thing that has been worse for the reputation and dignity of parliament than the fraud and the troughing has been the almost unending buck-passing and claiming of incompetence (or as they’d put it “honest mistakes”). If they can’t manage to submit receipts properly then how can they possibly oversee public spending, and if they won’t accept responsibility for their own actions how can we trust them to hold anyone else to account?
Reading Daniel Hannan’s piece on the matter the thing that really gets me is this from Gordon Brown:
“Other public bodies, he asserted, were now subject to external regulation.”
Does he not get that Parliament is meant to be the external regulator, the only other forces that should ever be supreme above Parliament are the law of the land, the electorate and the monarch in whose government he serves, Meanwhile I await the imminent announcement of “off-gov” with an increasing sense of rage and despair.
Update commentary along similar lines from Dizzy Thinks and Guido
Update the 2nd and more of the same from Iain Dale and LPUK
Not getting it
Apart from a desire to find out just which of our MPs are corrupt or inept we must surely be reaching the point where everything that needs to be said has been said. Though much which needs to be done is still to be done.
The most common excuses seem to be that either things “were within the rules” or where down to “honest mistakes”, as it’s terribly easy to forget when you’ve paid off a mortgage, or forget to only claim for the interest part of your mortgage. Given that the “rules” apparently state that all claims must be incurred solely during the performance of their duties as MPs and that luxury items are right out very few of the claims we’ve seen come even within shouting distance of these rules. So we are left having to decide if our representatives are either criminal or incompetent. In either case they’re surely not fit to hold high office, if you can’t understand the principle rules of no luxury items and incurred purely in performing one’s duties, how can they possibly understand the rules they’re bringing into force. If they are so bad at accounting they forget they’ve paid off mortgages or that they’ve already claimed for something how can they possibly make sense of departmental budgets or hold anyone to account for public spending? If it somehow turns out that they are uttering the odd word of untruth regarding these matters, then how can they possibly be trusted to not be corrupt. The individual degree of how much they may or may not have mistakenly claimed isn’t the problem so much as how much it has said about the gulf between them and us and how little we can trust them. If we can’t trust them with “small” things, why trust them with large ( I seem to recall a rather famous tale about talents..)
I’d much rather they had drink problems, secret lovers or any number of human failings as long as these failings were dealt with out of thier own pockets. Provided they understood that they were in the commons at our behest to represent us and acted in that way.
The two things which have stood out for me more than anything in this whole sorry mess are the lack of understanding from the great and good and the lack of action. Whilst everyone is entitled to fair process and these things do take time it seems that there will be little real penalty for these honest mistakes, which (as many others have observed) outside of parliament would result in anyone else being at least unemployed and far more likely to be facing serious criminal charges. (though it seems that they may be some charges being brought). But for the “repayments” as observed elsewhere the money being re-paid is just going back into the pot it came from. For those “paying back” capital gains tax unless they’re admitting tax fraud that will count as credit to their future tax bill, as for the rest of us at least those are the only two options you can’t just give the tax man a bit extra out of the goodness of your heart. Suddenly we can’t move for MPs saying how they’ve been speaking out against the system for years, yet there don’t seem to be that many publishing their full expenses rather than summaries (and the devil is so often in the detail).What has been stopping them all these years from acting unilaterally and publishing their full expenses, voting for transparency, only make claims within the bounds of their new found austerity. Whilst it takes formal action in parliament to force them all to obey such rules what stopped any of them doing this before hand? Even know when they are talking about taking action why do they refer everything to outside bodies (that they appoint) rather than doing the job they are paid for and consider the matter and legislate themselves? It must surely be better that they take responsibility and decide these things themselves rather than hand it to a bunch of their mates and then turn round later and say “the nasty quango made us do it then ran away”?
But for lack of understanding you can’t beat the MPs that have claimed they were of “modest means” despite MP’s basic wages putting them in the top 10% of wage earners. But those non-luxury items they need still manage to include 15 grand book cases and 8 grand telly’s. These are people who think spending 17 hundred to reupholster a sofa is better value than spending four hundred in DFS. It is apparently all our fault though as we deserve corrupt MPs if only we’d trusted them for the last god knows how many years and let them police themselves then none of this would have happened, we forced them to abuse the system by not trusting them… or something like that I assume. Despite it being our fault though, it seems that if we have the cheek to consider not voting for the main parties then that will imperil democracy itself for we may let in extremists as heaven for fend we vote for anyone that might actually represent us. No our only allowed course of action is to vote for the same old parties and trust them to be honest and act in our own best interest for if we don’t trust them democracy will fail.
There is thankfully an upside to all of this we’re finding out who the decent MPs are (Labour Home, Telegraph) even if they’re not getting a terribly high profile (Kate Hoey MP deserves special mention for speaking up for the whistle blower). That is however a telling point that few if any of the honest and decent MPs are anywhere near the front benches, and they also seem to have been blissfully unaware of the corruption around them – otherwise surely they’d have spoken out? The other far brighter point though is that people are paying far more attention to our politicians and to their actions and are getting involved in politics again. Hopefully we’ll all remember these events by the time the general election comes round and not be gullible enough to vote them all back in, though such a time may yet be sooner than expected (which perhaps can be encouraged).
As a last word it’s worth reading what Ms Brooke has to say on the matter over at the BBC.
Update: Just came across this The Last ditch explains why it was not within the rules
Passing thought
With hopefully at least some of our elected representatives facing criminal charges for fraud, tax evasion or something, the recent moves to give prisoners the vote starts making so much more sense. Whilst the blame for such a move has been put firmly on the EU, perhaps it was just a rare bit of forward thinking from the embezzling low life that rule over us. Would anyone be surprised if it turns out that the EU’s human rights group decides that not only is it illegal to withhold the vote from convicts but that it’s just as illegal to prevent them from sitting as MP’s or MEP’s?
Couldn’t put it better
The daily mash has got it pinned down perfectly.
(Via Devils Kitchen)
Changing the rules
So finally we have the usual pathetic shadows of apologies that we’ve come to expect from Gordon and Dave. Neither seems particularly sorry about what their MPs have been doing over the years so much as that they’ve been caught. Of course still they carry on with the “within the rules” nonsense, the rules it would seem state:
“Claims must only be made for expenditure that it was necessary for a Member to incur to ensure that he or she could properly perform his or her parliamentary duties”
As Anna Raccoon observes in the case of Phil Woolas shoes, comics jumpers etc. can hardly fall under that definition. Which seems to be the case with a substantial number of the claims published so far. So what is the point of our glorious leaders promising to change the rules when they’re already not keeping to the rules. I do think that changing the rules is probably vital, but there is no point in changing rules unless the rules are actually enforced. As it is it seems like just another knee jerk make more laws and don’t worry about enforcement because just making the law makes everything so type response that is so beloved of our current parliament.
As Old Holborn observes, sorry isn’t good enough. Fraudulent claims have been made it isn’t sufficient that some token amount be repaid, it isn’t even sufficient if every last ill gotten penny is repaid. There must be criminal proceeding brought with appropriate penalties for those found guilty, exactly the same as the rest of us can expect if we make mistakes on tax returns or benefit claims. Where it is uncertain how much has been claimed then the same yard stick must be used on them as on us, they must prove it was legitimately gained or lose it, the provision of the Proceeds of Crime act “Property: general provisions” would to my laymans eye seem particularly handy.
Once every single member has been investigated and charged as appropriate, once every member who’s made a dodgy claim has been kicked out of their seat for bringing parliament into dishonor then maybe these apologies will carry some weight. In the meantime there’s nothing to stop any of our elected representatives taking matters into their own hands and if they’re so sure that their claims are justified publish them unredacted in full for their constituents to see. Greg hands MP has done it, what’s stopping the other 645? After all if they’ve nothing to hide they’ve nothing to fear? Right?
Or perhaps all that is left is for her Majesties subjects to petition her Majesty to remove the corrupt parasites currently occupy her parliament and to allow us to give voice and pass verdict on the lot of them in the government convened court of public opinion.
They suggested it over a different matter but I begin to suspect that the BNP have a good point. (One shouldn’t ignore the message merely due to the messenger).
Update: Constantly Furious has a good suggestion for those MPs that are genuinely sorry, and Anna Raccoon a suggestion for who should watch the claims in future.
Within the rules?
The scandal of of MPs expenses is being covered remarkably well all over the place and you now it’s bad when even Alistair Campbell is expressing dismay (hat tip http://plato-says.blogspot.com/2009/05/is-tomorrow-sucide-sunday.html”>Plato). Having spent the day in the garden I’m not going to let that stop me giving my tuppence worth (possibly now twenty pence worth after seasonal adjustment and inflation of two pounds if being claimed on an MP’s expenses). First off a huge tip of the tifter to Heather Brooke who as Anna Raccoon relates so well is the person that dragged the whole seconds homes thing out into the open.
What puzzles me most is the way that it seems generally accepted that this profligate abuse of the systems was actually “within the rules” and the subsequent calls for the system to be reformed. When looking at some of the most
blatant examples, they would appear to be well out side of the rules if not out right fraud and should have been refused if there had been decent enforcement. Of course that’s tricky if the person responsible for enforcing the rules is on the take as well. So the rules if kept should largely have sufficed it’s only due to our representatives doing what they could not what they should that has caused the problems, and trotting out the most pathetic of excuses whilst doing so.
Looking at which MPs have commented so far … very few. Tom Harris MP completely fails to get it – suggesting that “no-one in any line of work, would welcome the retrospective publication and critique of their expenses claims“, not realising that for the rest of us it would be no big deal as:
a) usually all expenses must have a receipt
b) Have to be purely for business reasons
c) Watched very carefully lest the tax man consider them a benefit in kind.
So really apart from people knowing that when working in some place I tend to eat the same lunch day after day and have equally dull habits abroad I really couldn’t care. But at least he acknowledges that “within the rules” is a really poor excuse.
However there are some good ‘uns out there Greg Hands MP is making all of his receipts available to inspection to his constituents at his surgery or on request (Hat tip Behind Blue Eye). Likewise Kate Hoey MP is standing up to condemn the actions of her fellow parliamentarians as is Kerry McCarthy MP. Still just the chirping of crickets from the opposition.
Meanwhile as the HMRC start to investigate MPs as they would rest of us to see if they’ve received benefits in kind, the corrupt troughers that occupy parliament have called in the police to investigate the leak/whistle blower. Fortunately it seems that some public spirited person has seen fit to report Mr McNulty to the police for having “obtained pecuniary advantage by deception’ prompting an investigation there at least. But at least we can all rest happy knowing that in this difficult time the great and ‘good’ have now got a special help line to help them deal with us being miffed at discovering just how much they’ve been stealing from us. Strangely though it seems Tony’s receipts and such have gone missing.
Given that the news of the screws is running a contest to live like an MP I think it’s safe to say that this at least will reach the general consciousness even if the general curtailment of our liberties and other matters haven’t. And whilst we can’t recall our MP’s voices within the realm political are starting to call for the current corrupt abusive mass to be dissolved (I’d favour a strong acid bath for the lot of them , followed by a deep pit and quick lime). It must surely be time for the all to go, but at least if Gordon publishes their outside interests as as well we’ll know who to vote for.
Just on the off chance you’ve not seen it already guido has a decent round up, and another excellent analysis from Andrew Rawnsley (Via Plato)
Update: It seems that Kelvin Hopkins MP is another good ‘un (Hat tip: Ranting Penguin)
Post of the day
I’ve been resisting doing the whole list of must read post things for a while now but The Salted Slug is talking far too much sense to not bring it to everyone’s attention. So for my inaugral “must read” post list:
- The Salted Slug reveals the real power behind the governments.
UK terror threat status
- Severe 2010/01/25