Some jokes write themselves...
 

As the Mother of Parliaments disappears under a tide of gravy, some of the expense claims put forward by our parliamentarians are worthy of note.

For those not preoccupied with the ins and outs of Whitehall, by which I mean mainly the Merkins, the background is this: MPs are paid a wage (65k for an MP and about 140k for a minister I think) and also have access to a system of allowances and expenses. Sme of these are very reasonable imo; for example, an MP whose constituency is far away from Parliament is able to claim assistance with the cost of a second home (or rental/overnight stay). This amounts to approximately 26k in mortgage interest payments per annum (though not all who claim for second homes claim that amount). Some of the expenses are...not so reasonable. Such as being able to claim up to £400 a month in food.

The system of allowances and expenses is complex (needlessly so) and not entirely honest in its goals. Every so often the idea is floated that actually our polticians are paid very little compared to many countries and in fact work very hard (in most cases) for that money. Unfortunately, few countries value their politicians less than the UK. Consequently any attempt to raise MPs pay to the level they feel they deserve to be paid runs instantly aground on the rocks of public opinion. So much so that it rarely gets spoken of beyond a few tentative whispers. Instead...the expenses and allowances system is made to stand the weight of the difference between what MPs feel they are worth and what the People are prepared to pay them.

So...we have an expenses and allowances system which is culturally designed to be abused, or at the very least stretched.

The birds are home to roost now. The last two weeks have seen a series of damaging revelations by a national newspaper who has managed to get hold of the unexpurgated expense claims of large numbers of prominent MPs of all parties.

No party has come out of this well. The level of public trust in public servants has never been lower.

But there are a handful of smiles to be had. For instance... If you are the leader of an opposition party who has historically been associated with the ruling elite in a country as class riddled as Britain, and as leader of that party you are fighting a rearguard action against your own core members to try and recast your party as a party for all... how badly do you not need one of your party (named Hogg) to be caught out having his moat cleaned at public expense? :P


All we need now is a cleaning bill for his top hat and we're all set for the new look common man's tory party :)

er . . . can't get past the first line with "mother," "parliaments," and "gravy."

Or is that the joke?

a guy named Hogg had his MOAT cleaned on the constituent's dime

He was waiting until spring to wallpaper the dungeon.

why is 400 quid for food unreasonable? Sure it's a lot compared to your average student in the north...-but one would imagine that their job forces them to eat out or buy preprepared food in London quite frequently? 400 doesn't go a long way then -especially if you have a family.

Gravy , as in riding The Gravy Train, obviously :neutral:

Most of us have to buy our food with our salary.

Yes indeed Zen. Most people use their salary to buy food.

There are a bunch of other odd claims. Some are just silly and make the parties look bad (like the moat cleaning bill, or the maintenance of heated tennis courts). Others are far more sinister and troubling. For example, prominent labour politician claimed nigh on £20k towards mortgage payments on the 2nd home allowance, despite his mortgage having been paid off years before. Others have played the system for large amounts: such as the tory couple who are noth MPs and both claimed second home allowances...but one claimed for the London house and the other for the constituency home. Basically they doubled up their allowances and gained an extra £140k.


On the whole I think the anger is over the top. Mostly our MPs work hard for a fairly modest income, and even with allowances and expenses they still take home considerably less than they would in almost any industry at their level.

But...these are the same people who regularly condemn 'benefit cheats' and at least one of them (labour front bench) has argued for unemployed alcoholics to have their benefits cut if they don't stick to their treatment programme.

With unemployment soaring and eveyrbody worried about the economic climate, being told that w all need to tighten our belts by people who play the system for thousands...is an uncomfortable thing.

The joke however, was the fact that the Conseratives have been desperately trying to show that they're no longer the party of wealth and aristocracy, but rather the party of the people...which project cannot be helped by revelations of Tory Grandees with gardens so big they take 4 hours to mow, heated tennis courts, chandelier replacements, and a MOAT around a country estate.

*chuckles* The fact that the guy was called Hogg is an additional chuckle.

I'm disappointed that once again there is a trial by media.
If I was running the country (heaven forfend of course!) I would draw a line under the whole fiasco. Start again.
Do NOT have all the expenses audited - it will cost yet more of the taxpayers money.
Do NOT witch-hunt and demand money is paid back - the system was open for corruption and the MPs played it, like every other employee in every other job.
Just change the rules and get on with it.

Will they listen to me?
Nah.

I listened open-mouthed the other morning to a 5 Live phone in where people were VERY ANGRY. One intelligent chap was insisting there should be a None Of The Above option on the voting form next election. That'll larn 'em. Something tells me he hadn't quite thought through the consequences of None Of The Above won....

ETA - what amused me most in this unfolding story?
The Lib Dem who claimed for a trouser press.
He must be the only person in the country who bought one that year. They probably all went out to dinner at the Corby company on the back of that.

*chuckles*
Oh without doubt this whole thing has got way beyond hysterical. Truth is the government (in 87?) refused to take the advice of the independent body set up to examine MPs wage rates. It was deemed to politically unpopular to increase MPs wages ata time that they were unpopular with the country. The increase which was deemed necessary to bring their wages up to speed with other professionals (like doctors) was agreed but brought in over 8 years, by which time it was woefully out of date. An MP whose career stretches back to the 80s will have seen their wages fall behind first doctors, then head teachers, etc etc.

The chief exec of my local council is paid roughly the equivalent of second tier government minister. A GP is paid 2-3 times what an MP is paid.

Most MPs I know routinely put in 70-80 hour weeks. They are underpaid.

At the time that the advice was being ignored (or worked around) a system of allowances was introduced (thats when the 2nd home allowance came in). MPs were told, explicitly but behind closed doors, that the allowance was in lieu of a payrise.

Unsurprisingly this has fostered a culture of entitlement. Now the public can be all righteous about the MPs fiddling their expenses. Some of the accusations are serious. Some amount to conscious fraud. Much of them are just accounting errors though. LIke Claire Short: the Telegraph puts out that she claimed for full mortgage relief when she was only entitled to interest payments. But that was in 2006, was due to a change in her mortgage which was not met by a change in her regular claims, was picked up by the fees office and the difference promptly repaid, looong before anyone was scrutinising MPs expenses.

But it all just gets stirred into the soup of public anger and outrage. There are reasons for that though. The truth is our MPs made this rod for themselves. Not by fiddling the expenses and being less than perfect (hell how many of us have taken stationary from the office; or put down a lunch with a friend as a 'business lunch' ?

No, they made the rod for their back when they all leapt with enthusiasm onto the 'bash the dole dosser', 'tough on crime', 'mending our broken society', 'bring back respect', 'we all need to tighten our belts' and 'personal responsibility - not state sanctioned idleness' bandwagon.

We are regaled with government ads warning 'benefit cheats' that 'we're onto you!' and 'we know the places you work'. The 'entitlement culture' they keep telling us we have fallen into. The anti-poor, anti-worker, anti-public service, tackling-the-benefits-something-for-nothing-society rhetoric with which they justify inhumane attacks on the poorest in our society, and sell the suffering of whole communities to a bearpit of public opinion that they have helped create.

That...makes me angry.


Let them suffer a little of that disdain they have so liberally scattered on anyone not riding the wave comfortably.

Having worked in the NHS, I am sympathetic to MPs.
Anyone being paid from the public purse has to washer whiter than white, and it can be galling.
People get so riled up about waste, corruption, overspending etc etc and most of it is media driven (ie very selective reporting) and to be frank, things that they wouldn't think about for a second if they happened in their own companies.

There's this idea that if "the taxpayer" pays for something, job conditions should be pared down until the job is barely tenable. Funnily enough, the taxpayer also pays the salaries of every employee in the country, one way or another. My former boss Charles Dunstone (Carphone Warehouse) would not have a salary unless people bought his phones. Yes, it's a choice, and that is the big difference, but to those who work under him, on a godforsaken industrial estate in North London, on barely a living wage, while he has a personal helicopter, it doesn't feel all that great. People don't stop buying his phones because he is a fat cat - and I'm not saying they should.

Anyway.

The Benns came out of this well. Of course. Maybe we should clone them.

Ya gotta love the Benns.


(though in his day Pa Tony was just as vicious and ruthless as the next front bencher:P)


I am actually very sympathetic to MPs most of the time, and in this expenses row I think the public has been whipped up by the press into a state of righteous indignation at people who actually are pretty good value for money most of the time. I have said on numerous occasions that most people's idea of an MPs life really is very far from the truth. I know several of them and they work frighteningly hard. I also know a couple of workshy, dense-as-fuck, never had a political thought in their lives, no sense of public service, doing it for the perks and press, dickheads. One of them geographically quite close by, I know has wrung every penny she can out of the system, up to and including wages claimed for her husband's 'work'; most of which amounts to running her in-party smear machine.

But most of them are decent folk, doing the best they can in a very difficult environment and no matter how good they are, a single story (let alone a whole slew of them like this) about dodgy claims or bad behaviour will affect how people see them as well. 'They're all the same' is a common complaint. Well...they manifestly aren't. No reason why government should be unique amongst careers in attracting clones. People are, by their very humanity, different from each other.

That said: I still think it shows up some of the most glaring hypocrisy in the higher up echelons of both major parties. The same junior minister I saw on tv arguing that we shouldn't be 'paying people to sit on the dole' and suggesting that alcoholics who fall off their treatment should have their benefits cut as a penalty, has been implicated in over-claiming on his second home.

I was (again) open-mouthed in shock at (another) 5 Live phone in re MEPs.
They had a panel of them on to promote the European elections. The Lib-Dem and Labour ladies acquitted themselves very well imo.
The Conservative gent, less well.
The UKIP MEP... OMG!!
He, and the Tory, effectively admitted they took the wage NOT to be involved in Europe. The UKIP openly stated he was there as a protest - but drawing a wage and expenses (not as openly stated). The Tory dressed it up as not creating new laws which will cost the UK "taxpayers money" but essentially said the same thing.

I honestly expected the rest of the phone-in to be a castigation of both of them. FTR, this was before the Troygraph published the stolen list of expenses. It wasn't.

Wanna hear the kicker?
After hearing the same show as me, a caller was asked, "Has this decided who you will vote for?" Yes, sez she - the Tories. Whaaa?! Sometimes I despise democracy.

Oh, on the same phone in, the majority of callers were asking the four - why should I vote in the European elections? What's in it for me? I live in a country of dim shits, obviously. YOU VOTE BECAUSE IT GIVES YOU A VOICE. You fucking retards.

Really Cherry...if you will listen to 5Live phone ins :P

Though depressingly this is a little more widespread than the usual. Hitchens was actually advising not voting (I think) on tv last night...on the grounds that the right not to vote is just as important...

Christopher Hitchens?

I think it was his brother, Peter. I get the two mixed up.

Peter is more involved with his home country's politics, but it sounded like typical Christopher, because he is always the contrarian. (I love the gent, fwiw)

DanaC, what is your role in the government? I don't really understand the structure of the British government, so haven't understood too well what your role is when you have spoken about it. Plus I know you are careful about revealing too much that might identify you to someone in real life. I gather that you are some sort of local elected official. Is that right? How do the local governments fit in with the national government?

Would you be willing to explain it all to a curious foreigner?

*nods* yah. I am an elected member of a borough council. Certain local governance is devolved to local councils, though it is heavily fenced in by government mandates. We have responsibility to deliver local services (or in the case of education 'commission' local services) and manage local matters like waste collection/recycling, traffic calming measures, local bye laws, licensing gaming establishments/clubs/taxi cabs etc. Planning decisions also are localised. Most of what we do is laid down quite precisely. Certain of our funding is ring-fenced by law to particular services. We collect a local tax (Council Tax) which is based on property bands and which in theory pays for local services. Most funding actually comes in payments and subsidies from central government, and that is based on our performance indicators.

There are different types of local government and sometimes they co-exist somewhat uneasily. So, for instance my borough is a unitary authority: one authority oversees the main running of the entire borough; however, below that level we still have the vestigial Parish councils in at least three of our towns.

It gets complicated :P

Earnings are very different :P But then it is intended that people are able to be councillors whilst still working full time. My allowance annually for being a councillor is £9k before tax. There is a minimal expenses system to cover additional out of borough expenses, such as attending conferences out of town.

The voting system is very similar to the national parliamentary elections. First past the post. But there tends to be more variance in terms of additional parties. The big difference though is in scale and levels of responsiblity. As a councillor I and 2 other colleagues between us represent a ward of c6000 people to a council which is not very powerful. An MP represnts a consituency of around 60,000 in Parliament, which is the centre of power.

So these boroughs, they are subdivisions of a county? Are there multiple towns in a borough, or is a borough smaller than a town?

Edit: actually, I see that you said you had at least three towns in your borough.

I see from wikipedia that each constituency elects an MP. And there are 646 constituencies. Does the borough have any relation to the constituency? Are they the same area on a map, or do they encompass completely different areas? Are they totally different systems?

At the moment, Cameron is shouting about having LESS MPs. Apparently we have more per head of population than any country after China.

Personally, I'd rather keep the number of MPs and just have a few more constituency MPs. Like benn as he's beenmentioned before. Backbenchers who work for the people who elected them. I might even consider - and sit down before you read this - voting Tory if the MP was right. Ha-de-ha, ent gonna happen though. People like me buy our own furniture /obscure Alan Clarke reference/

'Borough' is a fairly arbitrary redrawing of boundaries and merging of smaller authorities into a unified whole. The old 'borough' meant something slightly different. There's been an attempt in recent decades to effect a restrucuring of local government in order to simplify...our system had evolved across centuries and incorporated ancient rights and priveleges, overlapping authorities and competing claims. The relationship between central and local authority is not a simple one. It evolved out of relationships between kings and barons, metropolis and counties, royal and local prerogatives, all in the context of a North South divide that was cultural, political, economic and at one time racial.

Local government is a different tier of government, contained within and below the parliamentary system. Local government has no legislative function, merely executive and quasi-legal functions. We operate within a system which is dictated by Parliament. We are one of the mechanisms for operating the laws and systems they pass.

I am represented in local government (council) by a representative for whom I vote. I am also represented in parliament by an elected representative, and again I am represented by a member of the European parliament. They serve the same places but at different levels. The area an MP represents is much larger than the area a councillor represents. There will usually be 60-100 councillors working in the area that an MP represents. For the European parliament the area represented is even greater: County level .

I actually don't fully understand it. I am still confused as to the relationship between the Borough council I sit on and the Parish councils that also meet in this borough...

Sounds really confusing, but I get the meat of it. It's similar here, and varies from state to state.

I live in an urban county. There is no incorporated city here. We have no mayor, just a county board. I am able to vote for each of the county board members when they are up for election.

In addition to that, I live in the state of Virginia, and I'm represented by a delegate at the state capitol.

*nods* yeah. Sounds very similar.

@ Sundae: here's another perspective on the expenses row. I think this article makes some very good points.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8051577.stm

Interesting, but - like all journalism - makes sweeping assumptions and pretends they're facts.

No. I say that too.
No, I say that too.
Do I trust someone who has worked the expenses within the given rules to look after the minutae of my money? Yes I do. I am the Worst Person With Money in the World. It's true, Monster gave me a prize. I've run Christmas Clubs, petty cash and Grand National sweepstakes. Not one penny has been unaccounted for.
Brits like to moan. And they like to focus on the second word in the phrase public servant. And they like scandal. End of.

A local MP I know in passing has just been suspended from the Labour party for claiming £13k in mortgage assistance on a property that no longer had a mortgage. He'd paid off his mortgage already. That's two Labour party MPs being suspended for claiming mortgage payments on properties with no mortgage.

I really don't give a toss about dogfood, chandeliers, or even moats (except for the humour of that one). I really do give a damn about people who stand over us, and legislate for us - including swinging measures against the most minor benefit fraud - defrauding thousands of pounds.

What really pisses me off about this is...these people are comfortable enough to have paid off their mortgages and then steal money. I recently represented a lad to the benefits assessment enquiry team. After a year of unemployment he'd managed (after a few false starts on stoopit courses) to get a full time permanent job. He's a young guy, with mild learning difficulties but he managed to nail himself a half way decent job. He went from the interview to the jobcentre and ended his claim. Was told they'd do the rest.

When they didnt do the rest, he got a bill for two months housing benefit, and then was made to go in and be interviewed, under caution, suspected of fraud. he told them what had happened. They denied it. He got letters telling him he could either go to court and be prosecuted for fraud, or accept a liability penalty of £90 which would stand as an admission of guilt, but not lead to prosecution (whatever the fuck that means).

He was fortunate in that he personally knows a couple of local politicians including the MP. It took several letters and this poor lad having to explain himself many times. They eventually decided it was an administration error.

All that for £250 that crossed over during a change from benefit claim to work.

This MP needs to answer some questions. But I bet he won't be treated as shabbily by those asking the questions, as my friend was, and as I have no doubt, you or I would be if we failed to follow every last unknown procedure.

The speed with which our benefit agencies leap to prosecution and scare tactics (most of the letters, including the one about the penalty option, were standard letters) is a product of the state that creates/manages/governs it. The same parliamentarians who have successively contributed to the creation of an unforgiving and distant attitude to the unemployed, or otherwise economically vulnerable, within the state apparatus created to meet their needs have applied a significantly lower set of limits to their own behaviour.

Me too.

Yup, with you there, Danster.
Although with a caveat - just because you're an MP, doesn't mean you advocate draconian measures against the poor. There must be plenty NOT on the make and NOT up for bringing back hanging for those who end up claiming too much in error.

From the figures quoted throughout this thread, I'd say your MP's are paid much better than ours. They don't really make a lot of money unless they're the PM...and even then I think he gets shit pay for the amount of hours he has to work and the crap he has to deal with (and I say this from a bipartisan position. I think most politicians deserve to be paid more)

Maybe so, but compared to a lot of places the actual wages aren't so high. £65k per annum is not a high wage for a national politician. Not when you consider the wages paid to management level civil servants in local government.

They're paid a decent amount, if the expenses and allowances are taken into account (the legitimate ones).

Well it's the same here. Federal pollies don't get much over $100k unless they're a front bench minister.

Definitely better money to be made in the private sector.

Here is some info salaries

What amazes me is the two (so far ) MP's that have been found out
for stealing money which was supposed to be paying for their mortgage, are not down the local copshop in hand cuffs,where you or me would be if we were caught doing the same thing.

Most of us don't have jobs that make it virtually impossible to eat inexpensively.

Very interesting insight Dana. Thanks for trying to bring it down to our level, which in the US seems quite more simplistic. Maybe our founders thought they should try to make things more simple when they framed our government.