MPs expenses

[rupertramjet]

Why do MPs who live outside London, think that they should be entitled to get living expenses anyway? If you worked for say Sainsburys, and got posted to a job in Bristol, they would pay your accommodation costs in the short term, say for a couple of months, then they would say 'sorry, you got to pay it yourself'. Everyone would say fair enough mate, and get on with it.

In the same breath, If, in a few months when I retire, if I want to go and work in Scotland, or home to Cornwall, I would expect to pay for it myself. Do all the commuters, who daily travel from points as far afield as Gloucestershire and Somerset, get paid expenses, or overnight accommodation? Nope they don't, if, as historically, MP's got no salary, then yes they deserve expenses, but they earn more than twice the National Rate, and people living in London on minimum wage, have to pay their own expenses so should our MPs!

[scoundrel]

Being an MP is a strange job, not just exactly like working for Sainsburys. If I am an MP for somewhere like Leeds North, I can't realistically commute to London and back again every single day. I also have a duty to be available to my constituents several days a week, so I really ought to live in the constituency. Therefore I'll be staying in London several days a week, but not permanently living there, and on this basis some form of living expenses are fair.

The trouble is that the system has been wide open to abuse, and as we have seen a change in the population of MPs, with pond life spivs and scum being more frequently observed, the number and scale of abuses has increased. A lot changed in the 1970s and 80s, especially when Mrs Thatcher was elected; there were many bad hats in the intake of Tory MPs in 1979. She made a big deal out of MPs voting year after year to freeze their salaries; so noble. We now know where the MPs were getting their extra bunce.

But just look at the others; Jeremy Thorpe was a total crook and it would be naive to think all the other then Liberals were pure as the driven snow. The Labour side was also plentifully supplied with bad apples as well. It certainly didn't begin with Thatcher.

[snowy25]

What London needs is one of those building like they used to have in Russia. Every MP then stays there when they are in the smoke for "business". That way it is a lot cheaper for the taxpayer as there is far less abuse of expenses going on. If they don't like being in a tower block then tough shit, thousands of their constituents up and down the country have no choice. If they want they can, out of their own money, pay for a hotel during their Parliamentary business. This would also free up a lot of homes for families that currently are squashed into places too small for them.

[haroldeye]

They used to have one Snowy. The problem is that all they do is isolate themselves even further from reality as they mix with themselves. Moreover they are far more prone to being nobbled by the Whips.

It is not difficult to work out a sensible system whereby those MPs who live more than 1 hour from parliament can buy/rent a flat in London and sell it when they leave giving any profits back to parliament. It would take Scoundrel and myself an afternoon (though we would feel it incumbent on us to bill for several months work).

I am assured by my people what know that the expenses rot started with Majors' administration but was honed to perfection under the premiership of a man who had all records of his exes destroyed when forced out of office by Smiler Brown.

[richardoe]

It would probably be MORE expensive to have a block of flats for all MPs to live in rather than have then claim expensives. As has been said all this didnt start in 1979 and its not the Tories who are mainly at it, all the MPs jailed for fiddling were Labour.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by richardoe

It would probably be MORE expensive to have a block of flats for all MPs to live in rather than have then claim expensives. As has been said all this didnt start in 1979 and its not the Tories who are mainly at it, all the MPs jailed for fiddling were Labour.

I bet Jeffrey Archer's expenses were more creative than his novels. But there were a series of scandals affecting the Wilson and Callaghan governments in the 1970s. One remembers John Stonehouse, who faked his suicide, a scenario which was later adopted as the comic opening sequence in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin,
He had been caught out in corrupting government officials in Nigeria because he greedily induced them to buy far more cement than the port of Lagos could handle. He was only one example among many. But the joys of fiddling parliamentary expenses were yet to unfold.

[richardoe]

Archer was an MP in the late sixties and early seventies, the current expenses only came in to effect in 79.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by richardoe

Archer was an MP in the late sixties and early seventies, the current expenses only came in to effect in 79.

And of course he became a peer in 1992, so he wasn't early to the banquet after all. Even so, I bet his expenses were good fun; more duck houses and less chocolate biscuits, and lots of entertaining.

[haroldeye]

Shepherds pie and krug