Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

One of their outer London MPs seemed to be saying that it was their policy.

On this issue (and personal backlashes) I'm hopeful McNulty will be out over his expenses, if not in a reshuffle then in the general election. A Minister for London who apparently didn't trust the transport in London to get home- not just public transport but cabs too, apparently. If transport really were that bad then wouldn't he have been telling us all about it? Funny, he didn't mention it at all, just kept sticking the expense claims in.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

This has the detail:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8044207.stm

It looks like the LDs are consistent. Their farflung constituencies do indeed require a lot of travel- £40,000 to Orkney and Shetland for example.

"Staff" is the highest number on here. That seems to be entirely legitimate, unless of course it's going to a family member who isn't working. It really shouldn't be in there.

My favourite claim is Eleanor Laing, MP for Epping. Second home allowance (despite living in a place on London underground) of £1 under the maximum.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

E10 Rifle wrote:
[quote]

you can't help sensing that what this reveals more fundamentally is the people to whom so many MPs compare themselves, and the people with whom they most communicate, and with whom they're most in touch. And it ain't their constituents. They've power-worshipped the financial world's masters of the universe for a quarter of a century, so have acquired a taste for their lifestyle. If you're in that orbit, 65 grand's not enough to live on.

Sinn Fein seem to have been knocking around with some very rich men then.

[David Agnew]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

Tubby Isaacs wrote:

The Liberal Democrats have constituencies in places like Shetland, Badenoch, Caithness and Bute, so those bald figures aren't fair. Their London MPs commute instead of having second homes, as I understand it.

I think Labour are already gone, so the effect might be more on individual MPs. Sadly Gove is in too safe a seat to be defeated.

Yet, even without being eligible for the second home allowance, and claiming £31k less on travel, the Lib Dems' MP for Kingston & Surbiton still manages to claim more than their MP for Caithness.

[David Agnew]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

Dennis Skinner claimed the second lowest expenses of any MP who sat for the full year.

Has much been said of the Keens? Two Labour MPs, married to each other, both represent constituencies in London (Alan Keen for Feltham & Heston, Ann Keen for Brentford & Isleworth) managed to claim over £38k in second home allowances. Ann Keen claims more in non-travel expenses than any other MP.

[Mr Beast]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

David Cameron attempts to seize the moral high ground, but his MP's won't let him.

Ann Widdecombe, the Conservative MP, expressed concern at the way the individual party leaders were announcing their own measures for dealing with the issue before the Committee on Standards in Public Life, chaired by Sir Christopher Kelly, had completed its review of the system.

"It is becoming a competition that 'My shirt is hairier than yours'," she told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

"The problem is that we will have about 25 preferred solutions of increasing hairiness before Sir Christopher Kelly has even reported."

She said MPs outside London needed to run two homes and she warned that it was important to ensure that people of modest means were not driven out of Westminster politics.

"At the moment we are faced on the Tory side with being told that you cannot claim for repairs and maintenance.

"If you are of modest means and your boiler blows up, somebody please tell me what to do. Perhaps I will go to David Cameron for a personal loan - not that I have a second home at the moment."

I can tell her what to do if her boiler blows up. Phone a plumber or gas fitter and pay for the work yourself you fucking sponging monster.

[E10 Rifle]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

Sinn Fein seem to have been knocking around with some very rich men then.

Well actually, yeah, they probably have, though perhaps not with as many as the others. What's your point?

[Duncan Gardner]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

E10 Rifle wrote:

Well actually, yeah, they probably have, though perhaps not with as many as the others. What's your point?

SF: Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the richest of them all?

IRA: You are. Unless the £26 million's all spent...

[Tubby Isaacs]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

E10 Rifle wrote:

Sinn Fein seem to have been knocking around with some very rich men then.

Well actually, yeah, they probably have, though perhaps not with as many as the others. What's your point?

That you're overdoing the point about this being down to MPs knocking around with the City too much. It's just claiming what you're allowed to claim. Some people see the entitlement as a right, others don't.

On my earlier point about staff, I was far too generous about this nearly always being legitimate. Doesn't this allowance mean that MPs can take directorships and get other people to do their job for them at taxpayers' expense?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

[WOM]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

Mr Beast wrote:

She said MPs outside London needed to run two homes and she warned that it was important to ensure that people of modest means were not driven out of Westminster politics.

Is there such thing as a person of modest means entering Westminster politics? Everyone's already a successful lawyer or businessperson before they got into it over here.

[Wyatt Earp]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

Is there such thing as a person of modest means entering Westminster politics?

Yeah, there are a few.

[Tactical Genius]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

What Ms Widdicombe is actually saying is that changing the rules will stop rich people joining parliament as They would be losing money.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

Sinn Fein seem to have been knocking around with some very rich men then.

They don't even sit in the fucking parliament do they?

The Nordy political class are real rapists of the public purse. Between the paisley extended family and the Robinsons, they were being paid nearly £1 million a year in pay and expenses for the MLA, MP, Council seats they all held, and all the various jobs distributed amongst their families.

[E10 Rifle]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

Seumas Milne sort of says what I was trying to say:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/13/mps-expenses-reform

[Duncan Gardner]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

The Mighty Kubelgog!!! wrote:

The Nordy political class are real rapists of the public purse. Between the paisley extended family and the Robinsons, they were being paid nearly £1 million a year in pay and expenses for the MLA, MP, Council seats they all held, and all the various jobs distributed amongst their families

These are broadly examples of Tubby's point- they do it because they're allowed to. If Ballynahinch DUP voters are prepared to vote for flat-earth bigot Iris Robinson in every election, and party members to let her sit in two or three jobs, isn't the loss theirs' rather than the taxpayer's generally? Someone else taking her place would 'earn' similar allowances.

As for her kids and in-laws working at Stormont, it's to be expected if we continue the fiction thathat public representatives are self-employed, rather than civil servants.

Sinn Fein's attitude is slightly different- basically that individual MPs/ TDs/ MLAs don't benefit individually from the gravy train. Although if the party does, isn't criticism equally valid?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

Sinn Fein getting expenses are a difficult one. As I understand it the second home entitlement relates directly to needing a residence near to the site of the parliament. That they don't attend that seems to undermine the case for this. Of course, I'm not saying their idle, and no doubt they do lots of other campaigning. Yet the allowance isn't for that, is it? Shouldn't that be a party expense? I'm fine with office expenses and all that for them of course.

[Duncan Gardner]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

Tubby Isaacs wrote:

Sinn Fein getting expenses are a difficult one. As I understand it the second home entitlement relates directly to needing a residence near to the site of the parliament. That they don't attend that seems to undermine the case for this

Indeed. The flat Adams and McGuinness share in north London should be a party expense as you suggest. Although it's worth saying that most criticism of it comes from unionist rather than Tory commentators. Hypocritical, given that unionists rarely show in Westminster (particularly if any of them are claiming the second home allowance).

[gt3]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

There's been alot of comment made by MP's that if the allowances aren't made available then politics will become the preserve of the rich and only those who can afford two homes will want to become MPs. Well, how about we start means testing MP's? It would certainly legitimise their next tightening of benefit rules.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

That argument would be stronger, if one MP didn't use the allowance to clean his moat.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

Is there such thing as a person of modest means entering Westminster politics?

David Davis, erstwhile challenger for the Tory leadership, grew up on a South London council estate. After an admittedly successful career in business, he entered politics at the age of just 38, over twenty years ago.

He now lives in a £3m country estate, complete with stables and peacocks strutting about on his lawn. Go figure ...

[Tubby Isaacs]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

In that Milne article:

The contrast between Labour's socialist MP for Luton North, Kelvin Hopkins, who commutes to work and claimed £36.45 of his annual £4,800 food allowance, and the neighbouring New Labour MP, Margaret Moran, who "flipped" her second home allowance between Luton, Southampton and London and is now repaying a £22,500 under duress, could not be clearer.

Hillary Benn's modest claim is no doubt down to his father being a socialist. Perhaps Ed Milliband's is too. It just seems to me that the rules are laughably lax and some people exploit them, some don't. As I say, Sinn Fein are socialists and they've not been shy of claiming. If he's so sure socialists claim less why is he telling us this sort of thing always favours the populist right?

Blears is coughing up £13,332 capital gains tax she avoided when selling one of three homes – but not the £45,000 profit she made from the deal at public expense.

She claimed mortgage interest on a place she later sold. She did not claim the whole amount she paid for the house, or indeed anything like it.

[Guest]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

After an admittedly successful career in business... He now lives in a £3m country estate

Well, fuck me. Successful businessman is rich.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

I sincerely doubt he was that bloody rich when he went into politics, on his supposedly meagre MP's salary ... 20 years of claiming £20k adds up to quite a lot, perhaps, before you get "found out" along with your peers ...

[E10 Rifle]

Where's The MP's Expenses Thread?

If he's so sure socialists claim less why is he telling us this sort of thing always favours the populist right?

You're mashing together two different points there. The populist right in general benefits from the sort of they're-all-as-bad-as-each-other anti-politics mood that is currently afoot. It's not as if the fact that socialists often claim less is widely known or publicised is it. And Sinn Fein's socialism has become somewhat watered down of late, and indeed would be disputed entirely by many.