MPs old and new unite in solidarity over expenses

I have a great deal of sympathy, in part because it's yet another example of the detailed policy being worked out according to newspaper moral outrage rather than a proper system

MP's anger at expenses 'ban' on first-class travel‏

I can see his point. My initial reaction is that he should pay the difference, but then you start getting into things about different people having different amounts of money and that starts discriminating against those with less money. I think working in first class is fair enough, so I'm actually going with the MP on this.

MPs' second home profits 'should be surrendered'‏

I agree

Legg's Limits

Sir Thomas Legg's report on MP's expenses raises a very interesting issue: how much should a cleaner be paid?
Legg think that £2000 is the most an MP should pay for a cleaner in a year. That's bad, very bad. That's a damn low wage. On the basis that that cleaner works 5 hours a week (not much) that just covers them being paid the London Living Wage (£7.45/hour). Which sounds all very well and lovely, but say someone does 10 hours a week? That's well below the National Minimum Wage (£5.80/hour). I don't know what he's based all his figures on, or how he's worked out his methodology, but it's interesting and shred some light on how he's worked all his figures out

good point on tv debate

A good point on the TV debate and our parliamentary democracy generally:
"That message is that you the voter, on polling day, are voting for a Prime Minister, not for your local MP"


on 'corruption'
"Amongst all the corruption in Parliament exposed before the summer, there were a few examples of notably bad and surprisingly good behaviour. Cameron’s school chum Bill Wiggin MP managed to use Parliament as a cash machine, withdrawing £250 per month as petty cash and a further £400 per month for food, regardless of whether he was in his Leominster constituency or his Westminster second home and none of which reconciled with a single receipt. Laura Moffatt on the other hand made the news when it emerged she sleeps on a camp bed in her office rather than using her second home allowance."

"Party leaders already get plenty of air time and more than their fair share of newspaper column inches. Already, the overwhelming majority of people vote on party lines rather than on the strengths of their local candidates. Providing a TV debate as the locus of the election will make it more likely that Moffatt will lose her seat in spite of her strengths and less likely that Wiggin will lose his seat over his personal greed."


"It’s because of this conspiracy to get people voting nationally instead of locally, in conjunction with an electoral system that promotes parties instead of candidates, that we have 400 safe seats in a parliament of 646 MPs. And it’s this overwhelming proportion of safe seats that gave us a festering culture of unaccountability in Westminster, creating fertile ground for the expenses scandal in the first place."

Pay, Banker's, public sector and the rich in general

Peston makes an very interesting point:
how much should people be paid?
As a lefty, i'm pretty much against big pay packets or bonuses for anyone. Hester may be an exception. His contract states that failure will not be rewarded (finally!), and his big cheque is dependent on his meeting certain targets which include getting a big profit on tax-payer investment and therefore significantly improving the public finances.
Surely all these things are the right things to do, and should have been done ages ago. It's been obvious to me that there has been a problem in bankers' pay for a long time, so others should have been able to see it if i could.
On top of that, a bloke taking home millions while millions are unemployed is an issue that hasn't been to the front in the current crisis, but that's no surprise

Kitty Usher leaves

What interests me most about all of this is the following statement, that Usher's actions were "in line with HM Revenue and Customs guidance and based on the advice of a reputable firm of accountants who in turn were recommended to me by the House of Commons fees office".

I mean, she should have noticed that it all sounded a bit dodge, but she has clearly followed the advice given to her by experts. Will the Fees Office or the accountants face any charges?
I'm sure Usher won't, and doubt anyone else will either, but should they?

How the media works

Now this is interesting.
It seems that the Telegraph have been easier on one of their own than on others.
Funny that.

Some MPs have claimed for wreaths, most of them got attacked, but not Boris Johnson who is a Tory and writes for the Telegraph.

Reasons to be cheerful

Rather than doing a big long rant about how crap the Tories are, temping though it is, I like to occasionally look to the brighter side of things.
Steve Richards has spoken of the moment of calm between expenses and the election outcome, and how the economic measures (fiscal stimulus etc.) might just have done the job.
House prices are rising, Labour's hit bottom, the economy is steadying as a result of government action, government bonds are flying off the shelves like hot cakes, Cameron is still largely singing from Labour's hymn sheet,

On the Tories: "So far only a few Conservatives MPs have expressed in private their anger that Cameron claimed the maximum allowance to help pay for his country home while he has told others who claimed less that they had acted in ways that were unacceptable"

The Tories economic plans would mean serious disaster for some people, often those least likely to vote Tory, with their opposition to Northern Rock being taken over, fiscal stimulus, borrowing.... Sorry, Tory-bashing again.

Balls (and Cooper)

Labour home is discussing the possibility of Ed Balls being moved to Chancellor.
I quite like Balls myself, he's very passionate, a bit tribal, really clever and determined.
Whether he'd make a good chancellor, not yet i'd say. He's much too young for something like that I think.
However, once again the issue of expenses came up and the idea that he has some sort of injunction protecting him, but seeing as he's already been covered and found not guilty, I have a feeling it may be anti-Labour bollocks. Seeing how things are for us right now, i don't much see the point

Another take on expenses

To be fair, i'm getting pretty sick of the expenses story, you'd think there was nothing else going on in the world.
I found a very decent piece in the mirror which caught my attention for being controversal:
MPs aren’t all bent.. and all are better than Esther Rantzen
Great start, all good stuff

Julie Kirkbride on expenses

The embattled Julie Kirkbride has been defending herself in the Times. The comments make it clear that she has failed.
I think her defence is not too bad, there ARE big outgoings involved in being an MP, that’s for sure. So there are some reasonable things to be claimed for on expenses.
BUT, it seems like she wants every essential thing in life to be paid for by the public purse, which is what WAGES are for. I have to pay rent and bills out of my wages, i’d dearly love to get my employer to pay for them for me. All this on top of the fact that she herself earns £60k+ as an MP, plus the fact she’s bloody posh to start with.
But the thing that stinks is her refusal to acknowledge the fact that she and her husband broke the law on the two houses, plus i don’t see how those photos of her (paid on expenses) are really essential to her job.
In a way it’s sad that people get party political over this, but then we have HUGE houses, duck houses, chandeliers, moats, tennis courts etc. Which are all Tory claims.
Labour haven’t come out of this great with the housing, but it’s one hell of a difference in the things claimed for.

The comments are very critical of her for using the ‘wife and mother’ excuse. Don’t know if that’s fair or just public anger, having no children of my own i can’t compare. She certainly doesn’t seem to spend much time with her child...

Clive James on expenses

Some very interesting points raised by Clive James:
“The Daily Telegraph spilled the stories about the Labour MPs first. With the conspicuous exceptions of three MPs who didn't claim all they could - a peculiar characteristic which we'll get to later - most of them seem to have been working the system in the direction of the limits allowed.”
“Even the most active of the Labour MPs seemed pretty unambitious when it became the turn of the Tory MPs to have their stories spilled.
Your typical Labour expenses claimer claims the expense on an extra radiator to heat his bedroom. Your typical Tory expenses claimer claims the expense on extra pipes to heat his swimming pool.
It's a different level of expectation. At either level, upmarket or downmarket, the tacit claim, the one that doesn't get written down, is - I need these things to live.
Another way of putting it is a sense of entitlement. With the Tories it's ingrained. These comforts are what used to be delivered automatically if you were a member of the aristocracy.
With the Labour MPs it's aspirational. These comforts are what one ought to have if one is a member of the meritocracy. But either way, the deep down assumption is that a certain standard of living should go with the job“.
“Though it's sometimes easy for the media to forget it, most MPs really do need two places to live, one in the constituency and the other in the capital city, and it's only simple justice that the London residence should be reasonably civilised.”
“In the bad old days, MPs from out of town crashed in a cheap hotel or festered in bedsits. Only an unreconstructed Maoist radical would say that they should go back to that. The belief that a politician must live like a student is one that only a student would hold.”
“But although entitlement is a tedious word, a sense of entitlement is a useful phrase, because it sounds like a dangerous thing to have, and indeed it is.
The phrase cropped up almost as soon as the danger did, when executives in public service started expecting a large salary, with large perquisites to top it up, because, they claimed, that was what they would be worth on the free market. Claiming that, they started claiming everything, and the mood soon spread.
It spread fast, and spread far, not because most people are anti-social, but because they are too social. If everybody else is doing it, perhaps I should too.
At full stretch, the sense of entitlement means that almost everybody takes what they can get. On a low level of ambition, the result is what the Americans call the Serpico scenario, when the honest cop is shunned by the other cops because he won't take the free sandwich from the deli“.

“On a higher level of ambition we get newspaper proprietors who don't pay taxes here because they can get away with paying less somewhere else.
Some of the reporters currently pounding out stories about MPs avoiding thousands in tax are working for proprietors who avoid millions.”
“Even if you believe that a free market is essential, you can't believe that a free market is sufficient and still be a politician. If you did believe that, you would be a warlord. Regulating the free market is what a government does.”
“The apparent scam of MP expenses looks bad, but the fact that it looks bad is the very thing that makes it not so bad. The outrage that we are encouraged to feel means that we live in a country where corruption is not the norm.”


This comment i find the most strange:
In essence, it’s ok for Tories to binge on expenses because they are rich, but Labour attempt to represent the poor and therefore are held to a higher standard. An arguement i often hear from conservatives.
Clive you miss the point. I expect greedy bankers to grub for money. I know that Tories in general are better off - and work the system. I have no illusions that leaders of industry make millions from shady deals. No. What is important here is the fact that Labour - and I single them out particularly - are supposed to represent the common working class man in Britain. A Labour MP is supposed to be better than a Tory because he stands for hard work and equality. This is their political stance and because they have always taken this to the voters, their money grabbing troughing is all the more dishonest. Who is the most trustworthy? A porn star running for election in the US with nothing to hide or a supposedly God fearing politician who behind closed doors behaves like a member of the Roman court and in public sells himself as a pure man? Labour have tried to sell themselves as pure but have behaved like closet whores. That is the distinction and why they in particular deserve the hounding that they are currently getting.
Mark Chisholm, Dereham, UK

expenses

Some more top work from Paul Halsell:
Some Sense on MPs Salaries
The true patrons of this greed are an over-mighty press | Martin Kettle | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk


One basic reason why politics has reached this point is that members of parliament were historically poorly paid for the amount of work that modern MPs expect to do. In 1983, when Gordon Brown first went to the Commons, an MP earned just over £15,000. It was an absurdly low figure even then. So what did those who could have changed the system do? They did nothing. Margaret Thatcher refused to give MPs the increase they needed or the framework for future salary review that would have put parliamentary financing on a defensible basis. And John Major, Tony Blair and Brown all followed her lead. Today's £65,000 parliamentary salary is better in real terms than 1983, and it is certainly a good income, but it is not high when compared with legislators in many other countries, or with the professions with whom MPs might sensibly be compared.

Why did Thatcher and the rest hold off? Not because MPs didn't need the money or wouldn't vote for it. They held off because they were afraid of the newspapers, particularly the Sun. They were not prepared to risk the wrath of Rupert. It was the press who stood between MPs and a sensible income. So the true patron of the expenses system against which the press rages today is the press itself.



To see the Daily Mail, owned by the tax-dodging Lord Rothermere (Private Eyes, passim); and the Daily Telegraph, owned by the really weird Barclay brothers, lead an effort at lynching is disgraceful.

UPDATE: One of the worst cases so far has been of the married Tory MPs Andrew Mackay and Julie Kirkbride. But in fact this story was, to its credit, pushed by an internal Conservative Party review. The Telegraph said nothing, perhaps because Ms. Kirkbride was a senior former employee there. See article at The Guardian.

Comments on expenses

Paul Halsall, you beauty!

Finally someone talking some sense about the expenses thing:
"I agree some MPs - from all parties - seem to have acted like pigs at the trough. But the total amount concerned is just under £16 million per year for ALL the MPs together. This is a really small amount in context. About the cost of a a military helicopter perhaps?

Meanwhile the Daily Telegraph is owned by those weird brothers who live in a fake castle off the coast of Sark and have every interest in seeing our elected representatives reduced in power.

The alternative to the House of Commons and Parliament is not freedom, but exclusive control by the very rich and very powerful - think of somewhere like Dubai, where thousands of workers live in block-houses while the rich live in palaces. "

Expenses disclosure

Blog on expenses.
This is hard for me. I’m sitting down. I’ve taken some deep breaths and got my shower and darkened room prepared.
Fair.
Play.
To.
David.
Cameron.
Ick.
From what I’ve heard (never the best way to start anything, but neither is praising a Tory) Cameron has only claimed mortgage and utility bills from his expenses. Which is pretty much what i think expenses should be for, rather than Letwin repairing his garden tennis court.


Typical Daily Mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1180225/I-didnt-come-politics-whats-owed--What-Speaker-allegedly-told-MP.html
'I have been a trade unionist all my life. I did not come into politics not to take what is owed to me.'
It is, of course, very important to be able to prove these things. But then, never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Expenses disclosure

So the papers are carrying the story about ministers' expenses.

Good.

Let's have some accountability. Let's have some reform of the expenses system so that the sorts of things that people usually have to pay for from their wages are excluded.
My take would be along the lines that:
Attendance should be rewarded, non-attendance punished. Thumbs up to Gordie on that one.
Rent should be covered for the second home that is a necessity of doing the job.
Travel.
Office expenditure.

After that, there's not too much that should be allowed. Staff should NOT be paid out of expenses but rather a central fund.

Outside interests should be clamped down on.

There's probably other things. Ideally, there would be a debate on this but i'd need people to read this first