Big furry surprise:
‘Expenses scandal: 27 MPs let one home and claim for another.’
And we thought the ‘new intake’ was going to be less money-grabbing and more solicitous of the tax-payers’ hard-earned in their care… didn’t we?
Yeah, right. Is it any wonder that many of us* think that our lords and masters are more interested in lining their nests and lining themselves up for lucrative jobs in the private sector – either while still sitting in the Hhouse, or on ‘retirement,’ on top of their fat ‘redundancy’ packages and gold-plated pensions? (Or, equally lucrative sinecures in the EUSSR kleptocracy.)
*translation: ‘I’ 🙂
Boadicea's Chariot 
Afternoon, Bravo. By “they’re still at it…”, I presume you mean still taking the pish and our money. The question is, what can a democracy realistically do about it while We are being screwed to within an inch of our wallets.
At best I suggest a student hall of residence arrangement whereby MPs from the boonies could pay rent from their own pockets for a bed and a bog in some communal block somewhere in the Great Metrollops. Otherwise, they and any London or Home Counties-based trough-hoggers would live in their own homes with no allowances.
If it’s good enough for the private sector, it’s good enough for our public ‘servants’.
And another thing. What are the ‘benefit in kind’ tax arrangements for these people. Back in the day the barstewards killed Luncheon Vouchers by declaring them as such for the plebs and taxing them accordingly!
OZ
I could not make out from the article whether or not anybody has done anything illegal. If they have, then plod should have his say. If not, I don’t suppose it matters what they do. The law is the thing and the rest of us should not concern ourselves with the whims and caprices of other people.
I am not sure why anybody supposes that MPs as a group are likely to have higher moral or ethical values than the rest of society. Of course there are bound to be exceptions, but think about it; here are a bunch of people who believe themselves so superior that they feel that they are qualified to legislate the way the rest of us should lead our lives. Either they are deluded about their own abilities or they are so graspingly ambitious that it should come as no surprise to anybody that they perceive themselves to be entitled to privileges and power denied the rest of us.
I stand by my contention that democracy as practised in western society is deeply flawed and that as long as it persists we will continue to be governed by those who are least desirable and least qualified to do so.
Thomas Gresham, financier to several Tudor monarchs and founder of the Royal Exchange, gave his name to the not entirely original adage ‘bad money drives out good’. (Copernicus had reached that conclusion earlier, and it is not even certain that Gresham said it at all, but that is by-the-by)
More verbosely: “When a government compulsorily overvalues one type of money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation.”
Gresham’s Law can be applied to any number of areas interfered with by the government including the electorate.
“When a government compulsorily overvalues one type of voter and undervalues another, the undervalued voter will leave the country or disappear from public service, while the overvalued voter will flood the halls of parliament and the ballot boxes.”
Henceforward this shall be known as Sipu’s Law, not quite as elegantly sounding as Gresham’s Law, but every bit as profound and accurate, though it could do with some refining.
Gresham/Sipu’s law applies to education. ‘Bad teachers (teaching standards) drive out good.’
To the medical profession, broadcasting, banking, sport and sportsmanship, the arts, literature, the military, in fact almost any area you can think of. The fact of the matter is that western democracies celebrate inferiority.
Sipu: No it is not illegal, but hardly moral. As regards the rest of your comment, I think you are reigniting the call for qualified voting, which would not be such a bad idea.
The only alternative I can see is a “British Spring” and string the barstewards up from the nearest lamppost! 🙂
I’m becoming increasingly irritated by the antics of our elected representatives.
I think they should remember the words of one of our previous Prime Ministers:
“(I consider) the right of election as a public trust, granted not for the benefit of the individual, but for the public good.”
FEEG, you are right on both counts. I agree it is not moral but I find it a worry the way some people look to the law to determine what is right in certain areas and look to their own personal views on morality to determine what is right in others. For the record, my conscience take precedence over the law when it comes to deciding what is right and what is wrong. Since I do not trust or respect the people who make many of the laws that govern us, or their motives for doing so, I feel no obligation to abide by them, but do so only if they happen to comply with my own standards, because it suits me to do so, or because I am unwilling to face the consequences of failing to do so.
E.g.
a) I agree that it is immoral to drive at 70 mph in a built up zone, thus would not do so.
b) I do not believe it is immoral to exceed the legislated 70 mph speed limit on the open freeway, but it may suit me for fuel economy reasons to adhere to it.
c) It may suit me to travel faster on the open freeway, but because I know there are police and cameras around, I will be unwilling to exceed the 70 mph limit.
d) If the road is clear and I have more pressing concerns than fuel economy and there is no risk of being caught in a speed trap, I would have no compunction about exceeding the stipulated limit.
As it happens, I know a couple of MPs fairly well. One of them, I am pleased to say, came out of the previous scandal smelling of roses. The other attracted huge negative press and public censure. When it was fully explained to me, by those involved, what precisely he had done, and as far as I am aware, he did not deny any of it, I could find nothing remotely immoral about it whatsoever. In short, he had been renting a property in London from a relation by marriage. Initially this had been condoned by the appropriate standards committee, but was subsequently deemed open to abuse and the rule changed. He maintains that he was unaware that it had changed and had continue to submit his claims as normal. However, on the basis that he had not been abusing the system it makes little difference as to whether he was aware of the rule change or not. He may have knowingly broken the rules, but neither he nor his relative gained from it nor did they seek to gain from it. The fact that his relation gave him ‘mates rates’ on the property meant that she received less than she would have done on the commercial market while the taxpayer who funded his London allowance paid out less than would otherwise have been the case. Had she not been a relative, he would have been charged a greater rent. But that meant nothing to the lynch mob. All that the press was prepared to publish and all that the public was willing to believe was that over the course of several years, he had directed, immorally in their eyes, a largish sum of taxpayer money to a relative. The truth is there was nothing immoral about it, but why let facts get in the way of bigotry, envy and prejudice?
I find it particularly ironic that the media of all professions have come down so hard on expenses abuse. Journalists the world over are renowned for their fiddling of expenses and I have little doubt that those of the DT are are every bit as guilty of abuse as the hacks from other papers. And how many of the millions of citizens who submit their own expense accounts to their employers each month have not fiddled their claims at some point or other? And then there is the question of whether or not it is immoral to claim the full allowance of 60p a mile, or whatever it is your company car policy permits you, when you know full well that it costs you only 45p to run your car? I cannot imagine that there are more than a handful of people out there who would not claim the maximum permitted under their company rules, nor do I see that doing so would be immoral. Is that any different to what these MPs have been doing? Of course it is a different story altogether when you claim for mileage that was not traveled on business.
As for expecting higher moral standards from MPs than we do from other sectors of society, I find that thinking perverse and naive. Everybody, whether they be teachers, journalists, lawyers, bankers, postal workers, doctors, policemen, tradesmen, industrialists or unemployed welfare recipients should adhere to the highest moral standards. In a society that preaches equality amongst all its members, there should be no allowances made for different levels of moral obligation, though I accept specific moral values will vary from individual to individual. We can’t all be clever, artistic, creative, articulate, literate, strong, beautiful, talented etc, but one thing that everybody can and should do is abide by his own sense of morality.
I should have said that ‘I agree it may not be moral’. It depends on the individual’s sense of morality.
Fair comment. Of course the same analysis can also be applied to “fairness”. One man’s “fairness” is another man’s “unfair benefits”
They’re not breaking the law – or even the rules as they are written. What they are doing is taking advantage of a loophole in the rules which do not prohibit a kind of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,’ arrangement. The point of the article is that the Rsole, sorry ladies, of a speaker wants to cover up what they are doing – again.
The point I would make is the same as Oz’s. This is taxpayers’ hard-earned we’re talking about, here, so taxpayers ought to be entitled to know how it is being spent. The next time ‘they’ come up with another scheme like the one Oz mentioned, or taxing company cars, or a company perking space, we ought to be equipped with the knowledge that lets us throw the idea back in their teeth.
… or mansion taxes, or second home taxes…
However….I was pleased to read that HMGov wants the EU to reduce the incomes of 4,000 overpaid europrats and fire some others.
Re our #7, I agree entirely, that is why we need to understand where other people are coming from when they behave other than how we think they should. We cannot deal with a problem unless we fully understand its causes. What seems obvious to one sector of society may seem as confusing as hell to another. It is a problem associated with imposing the same law on everybody without first having attempted to ensure that they all share the same, or at least very similar, moral values.
It is illogical to suppose that the vast majority of British Muslims are fundamentally less moral than their non Muslim counterparts. If anything the reverse is more likely to be the case as religion tends to enforce stricter moral adherence upon those who practise it. What makes Muslims appear so unpleasant to many in the West is that they have a wildly different set of morals to the ones on which Western law is based. To us, freedom of speech is a right and that includes the freedom to denigrate their prophet. But for them it is an outrage to insult Mohammed and they have a moral obligation to prevent it, regardless of what any law dictates.
I do not condone their behaviour in protesting in the way that they do, but I understand it. The people who are at fault are those, who believing in the ideal and viability of a multicultural, multi-ethnic society, encouraged, or at least did nothing to prevent their immigration to the country.
Whoever allowed such quantities of Muslims into Britain without ensuring that their moral values coincided with our own, cocked up enormously. Troubles will continue until such time as a common moral standard has been reached across all sectors of society and that is something which wont happen in any of our life times.
I think that is precisely the point, Bravo. Not that they breaking the law, but that they are trying to yet again trying to avoid scrutiny of their financial arrangements.
Exactly, Araminta.
Well who does not want to avoid scrutiny of any kind. Sorry, but I do not see a difference between what they do and what anybody else is likely to do. The fact that it is tax payers’ money is irrelevant. There is no difference between that and any other kind of money that belongs to, or originates from, other people. If I am being ripped off by a high street shop or a lawyer or an accountant or a plumber, or the government, or an MP, I am still being ripped off. The idea of ‘tax payers’ money’ being sacrosanct is just silly. You have to pay tax to live in a society that provides the services one gets in the UK, just as you have to pay to eat. Both the tax man and the grocer are capable of overcharging and under delivering.
MPs are no different to anybody else. People who believe that they are or that they should be are either deluding themselves, or to put it bluntly, are not very bright.
We can all agree that nobody should be doing it, but we should also agree that most people are doing it in whatever sphere they work . The real problem is that we have system of government that lends itself to corruption though it does provide a level of service that is better than many other countries. Either accept it for what it is, warts and all, and stop all the indignant outrage at the frailties of those who participate in it or condemn it and offer an alternative.
We have a moral right to point a moral finger at a gubmint that is currently accusing some of its employees (and those of the the BBC) of immoral tax avoidance within the akshull law. It’s called hypocrisy – again.
OK Janus, the ‘gubmint’ thing has been done to death.
I am not sure what is meant by a ‘moral right’. Do you mean morally justified or a moral obligation? No matter. What you are saying is that MPs and members of the government are guilty of hypocrisy. Well, there’s a surprise.
The problem is that too many people look to the government for moral guidance; they equate the law with morality. That is a huge mistake. Society should determines the morals, the government should enact the laws to suit those morals. It should not be the other way round. Too much recently, the government is telling us what we must believe and what we must not. Attitudes and legislation concerning global warming are a case in point. The government has an agenda. They are trying to force people to accept alternative energy sources and they cast aspersions on those who oppose windmills in their back yards, calling them ‘climate change deniers’. They are trying to make it a moral obligation to believe in AGW and a moral duty to pay the vast taxes required to counter it.
Morning Sipu.
In many ways I agree with what you are saying, but previously MPs with regard to salaries pensions and expenses made their own rules, and there was little or no public scrutiny.
This changed, due to public demand. IPSA, supposedly an independent body were set up to clarify the rules.
What I fail to understand it why after the furore of the expenses scandal, they cannot follow them.
I agree that it seems to be only a small number who are taking advantage, but they know that in likelihood they will be found out, and yet more discredit will be heaped on our elected representatives.
They would be right to respond that they are following the rules. Change them, FGS.