I nabbed these two stories from Guido Fawkes. I normally try to keep away from other bloggers stuff. However, the day didn't feel complete without a comprehensive list of Labour wrongdoing.
First one up, the MP and the sauna: from the News of the World:
One Labour MP is said to have claimed the cost of building a sauna on his second homa allowance, insisting that a skin condition made it necessary for him to have regular sessions at his home. The unnamed parliamentarian would have left taxpayers with a bill of thousands of pounds.
Then, there is the curious case of the car mileage and the MP: from the Sunday Herald:
A SENIOR Labour MP has been challenged by a member of his own staff over the thousands of pounds in mileage he claimed from the taxpayer. Jim Devine, who has claimed a total of nearly £17,000 in "car" and "mileage" costs, said his office manager drove him around his constituency in her own vehicle and he repaid her costs in full.
But the office manager, Marion Kinley, told the Sunday Herald: "I received only £60." A leaked email also shows that a Labour councillor accused Devine, the MP for Livingston, of expecting his staff to act as chauffeurs.
Next up; David Milliband and the private jet; again from the News of the World:
FOREIGN Secretary David Miliband is to waste hundreds of thousands of pounds on a private jet to whisk him around the world. As recession-hit Britain struggles under the weight of historic debt, Mr Miliband plans to travel in FIVE-STAR LUXURY rather than take scheduled flights. It means flying him to the US and back just once could cost £250,000. A spokesman, defending the extravagant move, complained: "Unlike other countries, we don't have a Foreign Office plane."
How much longer do we have to put up with these people?
11 comments:
Alice, your economic insights are fascinating. Please give us more of these and fewer political rants. Lots of us are fed up with Labour but I don't need to come here to hear about it!
I whole heartedly agree with the Right Honourable gentleman's comment above. No one wants to hear about his or his colleagues expense claims!
Dear Alice,
Could you also add a UK property price chart in Euros. I expect a 50% price decline in the chart.
Thank you in advance.
Yours,
Rambo
I think that Mr Millibandwidth should be suspended.
I'm going to do a post, Alice.
Many MPs lament the fact that they are good and honest and are all being tarred with the same brush.
I posit that they are due no sympathy for the simple reason that they have allowed a culture under which no-one resigns any more. No matter the level of impropriety the person will cling to office like a limpet.
For allowing this degredation of public standards - the failure to enforce resignation; the tainting of the entire field of public office through abject cowardice where self-regulation should be present, every single MP and Minister deserves to be viewed as total scum. That is the price which they must pay now.
And so it has come to pass. A catasrophic scism between the electorate and public office.
I trust that you will get back to posting graphs with laughs, Alice.
But have faith in your instincts. I feel you have posted the right ariticle at the right time.
I may be 'an ignorant peasant' but I know class when I see it.
Graphs with laughs!
I got to find them electro-kevin, that the trick. It is not always easy. Anyway, tomorrow will be a graph day.
There is one thing that I always wonder about; I could do a lot more on the US economy, but I wonder if there is much interest?
Alice
America sneezes an' we catch da cold ...
You see the pertinence of it all and you're right. It DID start in America. But that's to miss the entire point. Britain was left naked in the wind for whatever cyclical downturn was to befall us - and Brown was so arrogant as to state that he'd ended boom & bust.
I feel that there is mileage in this thing about member's culpability in the degradation of parliament. (I have forwarded it to some polemicists.)
It only takes for good men to do nothing ...
Anyway. Why are you blogging of a bank holiday ? You can be such a nerd, Alice.
;-)
"I posit that they are due no sympathy for the simple reason that they have allowed a culture under which no-one resigns any more."
Agreed. Not one voice raised in condemnation in over fifteen years, not one.
Honourable members, this is how the meaning of words change.
I enjoy your blog and economic insights.
I don't mind the odd political diversion: the system is corrupt and broken. The whole mess needs exposing.
As the poster above suggests, they all allowed this to happen. They are all to blame.
tinks
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