Articles with the Tag MPs

Alas Smith & JonesMcShane

Corruption, New Labour, Sensible Liberals, Writing
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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?

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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.

A Good Day To Bury A DNA Database

Uncategorized
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The expenses scandal rolls on and on, and while it may be a disaster for the public’s faith in constitutional government, for New Labour it’s business as usual and every new day of scandal is just another good day for burying bad news.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith in particular must be chuffed to bits that the politerati’s bogged down in the mire of the expenses scandal; it all not only takes the heat off her personal travails, it lets her get on with dismantling democracy by the back door in decent peace and quiet:

Opposition parties and civil liberty groups united to condemn plans that are being steered through parliament while MPs are distracted by the expenses row.

The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats claim the government is seeking to make controversial changes to the national DNA database via a “statutory instrument” because it fears losing a vote that would be required if they were introduced by the more conventional method of primary legislation.

A statutory instrument has to be discussed only by a specialist committee which meets for 90 minutes and is usually made up of 16 MPs and a chairman. Critics say the Labour MPs who will dominate the committee will be handpicked by government whips and therefore back the Home Office proposals

How to do things with rules, in a nutshell.

Wounded and weak though he is, Gordon Brown is still PM and intends to stay PM for the foreseeable future; he still wants to get his way and as we already know, bullying is one of his favoured methods of doing so. I’ll bet those MPs will be handpicked – handpicked to be lying awake nights fretting they’ll be found out about something.

I can only hope that because of the unauthorised publication of the unredacted reciepts (with more yet to come) that the whips have lost most of their coercive power over MPs. I can only hope too that enough MPs are roused by this blatant use misuse of procedure to ensure the DNA database isn’t bulldozed through via statutory instrument while there’s no Speaker and Parliament’s in turmoil.

Those are very faint hopes, though. What they’re fretting about nights may not even be expenses at all: milking allowances may be the least of some MPs’ sins. While the latest revelations are certainly juicy and indicative of the unscrupulousness greed of some MPs, not least the whips themselves, not all scandals are financial and the whips probably have plenty of even juicier stuff left to make members sweat with nervousness and suddenly decide to retire ‘because of health problems’.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that publication of the reciepts has enabled whips to join the dots on some very questionable personal behaviour by some MPs. I think MPs will do what they’re told.

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

Sleaze, UK politics
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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…

A Need To Focus

Bloody Lawyers, Corruption, New Labour, Parenting, UK politics, War on Terror
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What was it Jacqui Smith said about ID cards recently?

“Like every other citizen, they [pilots] ask themselves what will happen to the data they are coerced into providing; whether it will it be safe, whose hands might it fall into, and what might they do with the data?”

Well,quite.

If you, like me, have been indulging in the bitter pleasure of having our belief that most elected politicians are deceitful, greedy, entitled egotists confirmed yet again, have you not idly wondered what fresh hells the government’s been quietly getting away with under cover of media furore? Me too.

MPs may be focused on covering up their corruption and incompetence, scrambling desperately to hold on to their lucrative seats, while bleating about data protection and invasion of privacy, but the implementation of the many repressive and unnecessary laws they’ve steamrollered through rolls inexorably on for the rest of the population.

First off, if you thought ID cards were a goner, think again. Spyblog reports that the planned advent of biometric ID cards is going ahead full steam . While we were boggling over 88p bathplugs, massage chairs and moatcleaning fees, four pieces of secondary legislation were laid before Parliament under the Identity Cards Act 2006:

They are The Identity Cards Act 2006 (Information and Code of Practice on Penalties) Order 2009, which allows government to require referees to vouch for your existence, and keep their details on the database too; and

The Identity Cards Act 2006 (Fees) Regulations 2009, which lays down a £30 charge just to apply for an ID card; and

The Identity Cards Act 2006 (Provision of Information without Consent) Regulations 2009 which allows for the sharing of your information by the government, without your consent, with the tax authorities and with credit reference agencies.
Secondly, Justice Secretary Jack Straw has told Parliament that although he’s backed down on trying to make inquests secret whenever it suited the government, he’s still going do it, but by using other legislation.

“Where it is not possible to proceed with an inquest under the current arrangements, the government will consider establishing an inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005”.

And who’d decide it was not possible to proceed? Jack Straw. Of course.

In legal news, the Attorney General and the police are collaborating on new legislation that will give ‘law enforcement’ – now there’s a nicely nebulous name – power to, amongst other things, remotely scan your hard-drive.

Oh yes, and terrorism legislation was used to spy on eight people suspected of committing benefit fraud.

But most worrying for any British parent is the announcement that the illegal government database containing your child’ fingerprints and other physical and personal details is about to go live:

Frontline professionals will start using the controversial children’s database ContactPoint from next week, the government has announced. Up to 800 frontline practitioners, including social workers, health professionals and head teachers, in early adopter areas will be trained to use the £224m system from Monday 18 May.

New Labour may have set all this repressive legislation in motion, but now the machine of enforcement grinds on regardless of expenses scandals or public opinion. And like disgraced Labour MP Shahid Malik claims to have done, the government will enforce the rules, however unjust and or illegal they may be, “One million percent by the book”.

MPs may be corrupt, but then we knew that already. This receipts hoohah is mere confirmation. Parliaments may rise or fall, but Government goes on – and I’m more worried about what the State is actually doing right now, and how to oppose it effectively, than I am about the petty bourgeois aspirations of Labour members or the mole problems of Tory grandees.

Though I do wonder just how far that purple-jowled prick of a Speaker Michael Martin can inflate himself in pique before he has an apoplexy.

The Foxes In The Henhouse

Bloody Lawyers, Corruption, Crisis? What Crisis?, UK politics
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Over the past few days multiple pundits have referred casually to the House of Commons Commission and the Members’ Estimate Committee without bothering to explain what it is they do, or more importantly who they are. The first is in charge of the regulation of the House; the second’s in charge of MPs remuneration and expenses and was accused of bias from the start:

A review of MPs’ perks and expenses has been condemned as a stitch-up.

The panel picked by Commons Speaker Michael Martin to carry out the investigation is dominated by politicians tainted by sleaze or who have campaigned to keep allowances secret.

So I thought I should take a look at who’s currently on this committee and who, if any of those tasked with keeping their fellow members honest has got clean (ish) hands themselves.

The score? Not good: only 3 out of 5:

    Rt Hon Michael J Martin MP (Labour ): The Speaker’s been spending hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to stop the details of the expenses claims being published: he spent £1,400 on chauffeurs to drive him to his constituency job centre in Glasgow (60% of children in his area live in “workless households”) and to Celtic football stadium; he employed his wife and daughter both on the payroll for an extra bite at the cherry:

    On top of his £137,000 salary, he has a pension estimated to be worth £1.4m, and the best rent-free apartment in London. His wife was earning £25,000 a year in the first years of his speakership, and his daughter until very recently worked as his constituency secretary. His son, Paul, eased gently into the Scottish parliament, earns £50,000 a year. And, even though he has a primary home fully paid for by the taxpayer, Michael Martin claimed £17,166 last year in housing allowance on his home outside Glasgow, which is mortgage-free.

    Rt Hon Harriet Harman QC (Lab) : Clean so far as is known apart from that one dodgy donation.and a few pesky clerical errors. But that’s largely due to an accident of geography rather than innate rectitude. Harriet’s answer to accusations of corruption? Blame Derek Conway. To be fair, she has voted for pay and expenses reform. But then she can afford to, on over 140 grand a year plus expenses (Which she helps to set the level of. Neat.).
    Sir Stuart Bell (Lab): Sweeper-under-carpet-in-chief and Church Commissioner. Fought disclosure of expenses tooth and nail; currently trying to have the administration of MP’s expenses and pay privatised, so as to exempt it from the Freedom of Information Act so we can’t see how completely lax he’s been and string him up.
    Rt Hon Nick Harvey (Lib Dem): In 2008, Harvey told his fellow MPs: “The public believe—quite erroneously, in my view—that our allowances are excessive, that there are irregularities in the way in which Members claim those allowances and that the systems in this place are lax. I repeat that those are not my views”
    Then why did he say this?

But even the three committee members with (currently) clean hands themselves. McClean, Harman and Harvey, don’t think they or their greedy colleagues have done anything wrong; they’re either tribally loyal to party, like allegedly bipartisan Leader of the House Harman and Tory Chief Whip McClean, or complacent, like lone Lib Dem Harvey. It’s not MPs, it’s the system, they cry.

But they control that system: they could have stopped it. They didn’t. Better to kick it into the long grass and hope it goes away. It hasn’t.

I was always taught as a good churchgoing girl that tempt somebody to sin was a worse sin than the one incited. Harman, Martin, McClean, Harvey and Bell allowed their colleagues steal from the public. They turned a blind eye; they even participated. They’re just as guilty as their greedier colleagues, if not more so.