Vocal Voices

Heard on the news this morning an MP is trying to claim for the expenses of keeping horses!!
Riding rough shod over us poor voters again?

He's been claiming expenses for keeping his stables heated, amongst other things.
They don't change, do they?

Well, you see, they brought in 'independent' oversight of their expenses, IPSA, and since then they have had pay rises equivalent to the average annual wage; and their expenses have risen to almost £100million ~ £150,000 each, inc staff costs. Personal expenses are running at an average of ~ £60,000

IPSA is supposed to safeguard public money. It does not look to be cost-effective to me.

It was virtually guaranteed that when the press crucified all those people for legitimately claiming expenses, just to get at a few who were kicking the backside out of it; that whatever regime was put in place would cost more than the one they had before.

It would make every MP determined to take exactly what they were entitled to rather than taking what they deemed to be fair.

To be totally pragmatic about it, Government costs to run and do long as these people see themselves as the senior execs of the largest business in the country, then they will demand recompense as such.

Not only am I not surprised, I am quietly amused that anyone thought anything else could come of it....

As you might recall, I said from the very start that the majority of these people were legitimately claiming expenses and the vilifying them was not a good idea....

Cromwell they most certainly do not change!

A few?

Even those who were claiming legitimately were doing so to the max from a list of allowed expenses decided by themselves. In a private company even the most junior bean counter would have found it easy to disqualify many of the 'allowed' expenses.

Then come the others, I believe about one hundred, who fraudulently claimed in excess of the already generous terms. These include a sitting and former PM, a sitting and two former Chancellors, numerous Ministers and Junior Ministers - sitting, former and shadow, Peers from all parties - only few of these were charged and jailed. It should have been them all.

So they are now claiming for everything but the air they breathe in order to get back at the Telegraph because it outed them..... that's all right then?

I could put them on a different regime and it would cost a fraction of what it does now. Not only would they have to provided receipts for every penny, they would also have to prove that it was absolutely necessary for them to carry out their duties. Don't like: resign.

Absolutely I could put them on the same regime too.

But let's be honest here. How could there be any "independent" body to set the expenses for MP's? There is a total conflict of interest with the job of MP's and any body or person with enough seniority or knowledge to do the job.

So what have we done? We have replaced an "honour" system with a "largesse" system because some 100 MP's had no "honour".

We replaced 650 MP's, of whom some 100 abused a system many felt honour bound to abide by, with a system that all 650 feel duty bound to charge every last fraction of a penny of their allowances or lose it.

Apparently we, the people, have decided they can't be trusted and must take a closer look at what they expense and set limits on it. They, apparently, now feel that they are being put upon and are living, totally, up to their living allowance.

What could not have been predicted? The press handled it extremely badly in the first place. They should have worked with the government and brought pressure to bear under threat of exposure. Underhanded, you might say, but, in the end, what did the media circus achieve? In the end we foot the bill and the bill just became a whole lot larger.

Do we call this a success? Not in my book!

All it did was sell newspapers and destroy the careers of a few people who might actually have been quite good constituency MP's.