Articles with the Tag expenses

When Middle England Attacks

Funny, Sleaze, Tories, UK politics, Video
Published on

Just because they don’t shout doesn’t mean they don’t want to lynch you. Watch troughing Tory Andrew McKay MP get taken apart over his expense claims by his politely furious constituents :

His face is an absolute picture. I might’ve been a little less contemptuous of McKay had he got up, told them to go forth and multiply, and walked out with his greedy and amoral head held high.

But he can’t get away – he’s spent so long playing the Tory grandee he’s permanently stuck in character. He has to sit and listen to people tell him what an asshat he is, because to do otherwise would conflict with his mistaken gentlemanly self-image. Look at his expression: it has the studied rigidity of the baddie brought to book in an Enid Blyton school story.

Exceedingly enjoyable. I’d like to see every MP made to sit and watch it several times a day for several days at least once a year, on their own time, no expenses payable. Can’t wait for the next one, for this surely is the start of a longrunning series.

Alas Smith & JonesMcShane

Corruption, New Labour, Sensible Liberals, Writing
Published on

I really must stop starting my morning paper-reading with the Guardian, if only for the sake of my health. I was already feeling a bit nauseous and then I read this gobmackingly crass opinion piece from Joan Smith:

I am sick of my country and this hysteria over MPs

Until now, I have not written a word on this subject.

She had my back up right there. Joan Smith? Who she? How very gracious of her to address us..

Smith‘s a fully-paid up member of the metropolitan politicoliterati. A journalist, dramatist and detective novelist, formerly married to Eustonite and Marx’ biographer Francis Wheen, she’s now the partner of the ex-BBC journo and NUJ activist, Labour MP Dennis McShane.

That would be the Dennis McShane MP who claimed 20 grand a year for the cost of running an office conveniently located at home – in his garage in this scruffy suburban semi?

mcshane-office

I’m sure it was all legit, but was it in the spirit of the rules? Who knows:

…one fellow Labour MP privately said he was ‘very surprised’ at the scale of Mr MacShane’s claims given that he does not have to pay to rent an office. ‘I pay £6,000 a year in rent so if he doesn’t have to pay that, it sounds like a lot of money,’ said the MP.

This Denis McShane:

    Voted moderately against a transparent Parliament.
    Voted moderately for introducing a smoking ban.
    Voted strongly for introducing ID cards.
    Voted very strongly for introducing foundation hospitals.
    Voted strongly for introducing student top-up fees.
    Voted strongly for Labour’s anti-terrorism laws.
    Voted very strongly for the Iraq war.
    Voted very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war.

More….

McShane’s right there in the vanguard of the New Labour, do as we say, not as we do, war-criminal brigade. Obviously Smith has her own opinions but presumably, as partners, Smith and McShane are sympatico on many things. So we could surmise where she’s coming from, even if she hadn’t already damned herself with her own words:

In this uniquely poisonous atmosphere, years of conscientious public service count for nothing; decent people are being terrorised out of public life and the perverse consequence is likely to be their replacement by a motley collection of minor celebrities, attention-seekers and outright fascists. Democracy itself is under threat, not because a handful of MPs have behaved greedily but because the public reaction has been (and continues to be) hysterical

An hysterical public that can’t be trusted to vote, obviously. Smith says that we, that’s you, me and J. Arthur Blokeuptheroad, are violent, sanctimonious automatons being manipulated by the press. Probably not untrue in certain cases. But when you’re addressing Guardian readers, accusations like that don’t go down very well. It gets worse when she invites us to compare MPs and their expenses to 9/11:

Being “monstered” may mean that you have to leave home for a few days and put up with being the butt of jokes in pubs. Some bounce back or rehabilitate themselves through tragedy, as Goody did when she discovered she had terminal cancer. But when the target is our elected representatives, most of whom have not done anything terrible, the consequences are grave. The sense that we are in the midst of a crisis has been stoked by banner headlines – it is as if 9/11 has happened every single day for the last two and a half weeks…

The coverage and vilification MPs are getting because of their own actions is a tragedy comparable to death from cancer or the news coverage resulting from 3,000 deaths a day for 19 days, she says. There’s spin for you. You understand my nausea.

True to her apparent Labour leaning Smith is not only blind to the moral nuances of life she’s hard of political hearing too :

…one of the weirdest aspects of the witch-hunt (for that is what it is) is that I haven’t heard anyone accuse the vast majority of MPs of doing their jobs badly.

Oh no? HELLO!

There’s a couple of million complaints right there. The public’s been forcefed a lot of crap for a long time by their supposed representatives and corruption’s the waffer-theen mint that’s made them justifiably explode as they have done at Smith in comments.

Lots of people have benefited from the MPs allowances, however indirectly; all she’s doing is using her privileged media platform to whinge ‘you’re all horrible and I hate you’ because she, like many others, sees her cosy life threatened. Fallout from the expenses scandal is inevitable. There is bound to be. Even though some of it may be misplaced, as long as it happens to people like Joan Smith I shan’t be bothered.

Comment of The Day: Hell No, We Won’t Go

Sleaze, UK politics
Published on

Guardian commenter 1971Thistle on why, no matter how bad the expenses scandal gets, the incumbent Labour government will never call an an election:

I think it’s the Guardian (And to be fair, other newspapers) who don’t get it.
The government knows it’s over, dead, finished for them. Almost none of them will be back, none to the jobs they so enjoyed and milked.

So, if you know this is the last ride, and the last chance to fill there [sic] boots, they’re staying to the end. It’s last orders at the last chance saloon, and they’re having a lock-in to drink the bar dry before they go.

They do get it, and that’s why they’re doing nothing but procrastinating; using the time to fill up the trolleys one more time. Why throw out the bottle when there are still a few more drops to be wrung from it?

As Deep Throat said “follow the money”. If you do, it’s all rather simple…

How They Suffer

Sleaze, UK politics
Published on

Only the principle that it’s only fair we should see what we paid for, the new shiny technological Telegraph has published a Google Earth gallery of what MP’s bought with their expenses.

Totnes MP Anthony Steen, for example, claimed more than £80,000 from the taxpayer over four years for work on his Devon estate:

Anthony Steen sought help from the taxpayer to inspect 500 trees on his land

To well-off Tories like Steen the allowances scheme must’ve seemed like just another wizard tax wheeze, just like all those other little wizard tax wheezes Tories’d been using from time immemorial to avoid their full tax obligation and maximise their income stream; just business as usual.

But it’s getting quite hot for some MPs now That we know exactly what kind of lavish lifestyles the taxpayers have been funding all this time, and less well-off Tory Nadine Dorries, whose expenses are also being questioned, has been expressing concern that the media pressure and invasion of privacy may lead to a suicide in Westminster:

“People are constantly checking to see if others are OK. Everyone fears a suicide. If someone isn’t seen, offices are called and checked.”

If MPs want to kill themselves, well, that’s their choice – but far from being suicidal, Steen’s openly defiant. We’re all “Just jealous” (I’m sure he meant envious, but whatever) he says, a view I suspect is shared by many MPs of both parties.

One thing I don’t understand. MPs are just as subject to envy as anyone and Labour members are better at it at than most, so why did none of them ever publicly question the lifestyle their colleagues were suddenly living? MPs are acutely status conscious, always checking out their colleagues to see they aren’t one-upped in some way. Why did no-one object to the sudden acquisition of wealth?

I can only conclude that Labour regarded expenses as the licensed union scheme to beat all licensed union schemes, all the Christmases and birthdays of a lifetime rolled into one. At last former civil servants, union officers and junior lecturers could have the lifestyle they always felt they deserved. Qualms? What qualms? The public voted for them, the public must have wanted them to have the money, QED. Besides, the public would probably never know. As usual few Labour MPs considered the long-term effect of their own legislation.

Now their greed’s been exposed, MPs are threatening suicide. I certainly don’t want anyone to die, for heaven’s sake, but I find it hard to have any sympathy for the poor suffering members. They must have known the voters would think what they were doing was greedy and wrong, but they still chose to do it; and those colleagues who said nothing about the suddenly comfortable lifestyles of formerly cash-strapped MPs condoned the wrongdoing by their silence. What else do they expect? Applause?

It’s no use Dorries trying to blame the media for the pressure MPs are under either. She may have some justification; journalists have always known the allowances scheme was a cover, she says, and for the media to be whipping up outrage now is hypocritical, which is true, and it has been common knowledge that MPs were on the make, witness Alan Duncan’s complicit smirk to camera and response of “Great, isn’t it?’ when tackled by Ian Hislop about excessive MPs expenses on Have I Got News For You.

But ‘everyone knew’ is no excuse: journalists couldn’t publish such wide-rangingly explosive accusations without the actual evidence to back it up and MPs fought tooth and nail not to be forced to reveal that evidence to journalists. So rumour was not substantiated. Nowthe evidence is beginning to be revealed and we all know now, not just a coterie of Westminster insiders.That’s where the pressure coming from, not the media, the voters. No complicit smirks from the voters.

MPs have only themselves to blame: they chose to claim what they did because they thought they wouldn’t be found out. What MPs choose to do now is their choice too: they should stop theatrically threatening suicide like a spoiled teenager who’s had their allowance stopped, and act like responsible adults for once, vote no confidence in the current government and force a general election. Maybe then we might let them leave this discredited parliament with a tiny little bit of respect left.