I've just been on the phone home, when my partner told me that the BBC were reporting that Speaker Michael Martin had launched a "root and branch" investigation into MPs' expenses. Good, I thought. It's about time too. Most MPs would admit that the whole system is creaking and is open to misinterpretation. Better look up the detail, I thought. And so I came to THIS BBC Online report - and my heart sank.In my naivety I had thought that Martin might have asked somebody from industry to lead the investigation, or at least to take part. But no. Instead, three time-serving MPs will be doing it. So three MPs, who have been in Parliament for a collective 64 years between them, will be coming up with ideas and reforms. No MP from the 1997, 2001 or 2005 intakes are included. No one from outside the House of Commons is included. And we really think they will do anything but support the status quo where they think they can get away with it?
I feel a whitewash coming on. Or am I just being a cynic? Wouldn't be the first time, I suppose.
24 comments:
Yep that would be brilliant matt.
Maybe the speaker could get a shade of white wash named after him ? Martin blank or Gorbals Fog ?
That nice Mr Maclean who tried to get MPs exemption from the FOI act last year looking into greater transparency? You have to smile.
With you and Guido watching their every step and listening to their every word, it will be whitewash that doesn't.
(The Police playing in background - every step you take, every move you make, every vow you break, every smile you fake, I'll be watching you)
Well, Iain, you are breathing the air of freedom in N America and it is rather heady. Too heady for some who grew up with the idea of kings and queens and duke and sirs and lords.
Frankly, I never thought I'd say this, but I have become a republican (small r in this case). The Queen does absolutely nothing for Britain and didn't save our Constitution, House of Lords or Bill of Rights from Tony Blair's insanely wielded hatchet. It was a case of "I'm all right, Chas. And I'm passing it all on to you."
Look at the Wintertons - a pair of over-privileged, on the make prats. Why have they got a title? For what? Why are they set apart from their countrymen who do not have titles?
I used to think our royalty/aristocracy/titles for merit was a thread that ran through our history and held us together as one folk, but Blair and Brown have sluiced aggressive aliens into our formerly cohesive society with the aim of weakening us to make us easier victims for the EUSSR.
No one objected strongly because everyone feared Blair and Alastair Campbell. No one in Britain published the Danish Motoons, although the Danes did. And the French did. And the Mexicans did. And the Jordanians did. So our self-vaunted free press was a paper tiger, too.
So the wreckers' ball was taken to our country, and all the people who could have spoken up and possibly controlled the insanely ambitious and destructive Blair, didn't.
This includes the Queen.
And now those people in power who didn't speak up for us, the indigenous people (and well assimilated immigrants)have a free pass to cheat the taxpayer and swan around with titles and work their taxes because they have MP after their names. The privileged class grows and swells at the same rate as the privileged class, at whom we used to laugh, on the Continent. And is just as unanswerable.
I am so angry.
Rather than let them take us further into the sleazy European system, I would rather the fresh air, sunlight and vigour of the American system.
Who would you have chair the enquiry then, Iain?
I expect Donal doesn't have much work on at the moment.
We need some kind of jury or panel (I prefer jury) to oversee the behaviour of MPs. This wouldn't consist of MPs, for reasons the Speaker, fool that he is, is demonstrating. Nor should it include the great and the good, for obvious reasons. Just a randomly selected group of citizens who'd monitor and regulate every aspect of MP's behaviour and sit in judgement on them when they break the rules or attempt to give themselves pay increases in excess of those they are vetoing for public servants.
Conway, of course, should be face an actual jury asap in my view.
It's the Wrinklies Wrevenge, isn't it? and they're hissing nasty comments at the younger MPs who are making it publicly clear that they aren't on the gravy train.
It seems that the scams aren't the exclusive province of MPs in Parliament, Iain. I've just finished reading, with mounting incredulity, an account in today's Times (see http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3308659.ece) of the £102,000+ 'refurbishment' of 3 Parliament Street, which is apparently the 'residence' of the Clerk of the House of Commons (aka Chief Executive - I didn't know they had one and rather wonder what he does with himself in the daytime).
Apparently this Commons official has had a touch of the Irvines and done his 'residence' up in unbelivable fashion - including a kitchen for £39,000 (almost twice the annual average national wage - who on earth does he think he is, Gordon Ramsay??)),and huge amounts for a wide variety of items including two Ionic columns (no, I'm not kidding) for £963.
It's quite clear to anyone that Parliament is quite out of control, both in terms of Members' costs and expenses and its own expenditure. (A covered walkway between two buildings is reported to have cost £435,000 and did not have to be approved by anyone!!!).
This enquiry must be widened and considerable thought be given to how the costs of Parliament in the round can be established, monitored and restrained. Taxpayers will be outraged at this sorry and seemingly endless saga of extravagance and unjustified expenditure. Does anyone signing the cheques ever stop and think how hard the poor bloody taxpayer has to work to generate the money that public officials spend like oman emperors?
This would eb a good time for David cameron to take a strong line and promise root and branch reform, including realisgnment of MPs' remuneration along lines I have suggested previously, including central provision of office staff and abolition of allowances, and a thorough examination of the real costs of running Parliament, increasingly seen as unecessarily expensive.
By the way, I am increasingly convinced that the so-called 'Speaker' is comically mis-named. I watched his statement yesterday: he can't seem to speak out loud at all, he mumbled some strange dialect into his many chins which required subtitles at least, if not translation into a form of English we can all understand. The Hansard reporters must be mind-readers rather than stenographers. It's high time he went and a Speaker was elected who can command some respect in the House and project a positive image of the Commons to the country beyond. I realise that this may be an uphill task.
Well said, Verity. Just one thing though, a figurehead sovereign means that a politician that half the country detests doesn't reverence as well as power.
They just don't get it, do they? I mean they just don't understand how this sort of thing lowers them in the public estimation.
Rachel Sylvester, in this morning's Telegraph, mentions the minister who had a huge row with the Commons authorities when he tried to submit a full set of receipts with his expenses. He was told he would be setting a dangerous precedent for his colleagues.
Not a good precedent, for God's sake, a DANGEROUS precedent.
Iain, may I direct a comment to Verity, and say that I (and I suspect many others) am growuing increasingly resentful by your repeated personal attacks on the Queen, the latest of which you have posted on this thread.
While I respect your right to prefer a republican system, and your right to have negative views on the monarchy as an institution, it seems to me quite wrong and unfair to attack the Queen personally. You must understand that she, as a constitutional monarch, has to work within a system of restraints that I imagine she must find quite irksome at times; but her personal success is that she has preserved the monarchy (thus far at least) through increasingly turbulent times, and she has done this by remaining impeccably aloof from political standpoints and divisiveness and recognising the limitations that our unwritten constitution places upion her. She, alone of most of teh curerent royals, has never given an interview or spoken to teh press - something we might all wish that the others had followed. She is, above all, monarch by consent - and her success is in maintaining that consent.
Your withering observations are much better directed against the unworthy politicians with whom we have to put up - on both sides of the Atlantic. But - hands ff the Queen!
Are you off then, verity?
Iain:
Sorry, but I think that you're becoming a tad cynical about all of this.
I have suggested what is the likely outcome of this totally impartial enquiry here
MPs are Honourable.
Any suggestion they would feather their own nests or exculpate their own from allegations of wrongdoing are a travesty of the truth.
We know we can depend on them to be fearless in unearthing nothing cos as Mr Conway says "I have done now rong".
So that's all right.
Seriously , which planet are this bunch living in? They are doing their best to amke themselves an object of contempt AND ridicule at the same time.
An amazing achievement.
Martin and his cronies are the NAIVE ones, if they believe that in a new media age of activist blogging, that Pork Politico MPs have a future.
It is likely there will be more Martin Bell take outs of errant MPs ( without regard to party label) in a darkening economic climate.
How about Yates of the Yard to lead an enquiry.I am sure he would love to have a go at the lot of them.....
"Someone from industry..." Come on Iain are you seriously suggesting that a senior businessman in this day and age would be suitable to carry out such an investigation?
Have you looked recently at the way that vote themselves ever more obscene remuneration increases, bonuses, freebies of every type. When did one of these paragons last put his hand is his own pocket to pay for a seat at the Opera House or a box at Ascot? When did one of this lot not try every trick to minimise their tax liability with specious overseas allowances etc. I wouldn't trust one of today's business leaders with anything - least of all something as important as this!
How about a jury drawn from the general public (see my comment above)? All three parties witter on these days about the need to involve 'the people' more in decision making.? What better place to start than with an issue like this.
Just a group of ordinary people, randomly selected from the electoral register. No consultants, no 'facilitators' - just ordinary people considering the evidence.
The evidence would have to be presented to them, of course, but we could probably haul in a couple of QCs to do that.
Not sure how many there should be on this jury but 12 feels like a good number. Their deliberations could be televised, of course, to add to the sense of involvement.
Has to be worth a try.
Colin
I take your point about not making personal attacks on the Queen but she is what you say she is - a constitutional monarch. But what is the point in preserving the monarchy if Britain goes down the tubes because the monarch refuses to use any of her constitutional powers? I am still a monarchist but I have a sneaking regard for what Verity is saying. As far as I'm aware the Queen - despite her coronation oath - has stood there while the present government has passed the most authoritarian legislation since that of the period immediately after the Napoleonic Wars and has torn our constitution to pieces. For instance, the effective abolition of habeas corpus has been met with silence from Buckingham Palace: not even a whisper in the MSM (or anywhere else) that the Queen might be a tad anxious about what Blair/Brown are doing.
Unfortunately the Queen's ultimate ambition appears to be that of monarchs from the year dot: to preserve the monarchy and, as far as the present monarch is concerned, to keep the Mountbatten-Windsors as the ruling dynasty. It seems to me - as a still-loyal subject - that keeping quiet will in the end be counter-productive for the Queen. If she does nothing and says nothing Britain will eventually - as Verity wishes - become a republic and the history of the Windsors will become yet another untaught subject in our schools. Unlike Verity I don't believe that democracy and republicanism necessarily go together (we tried republicanism once - it didn't work). As the least justification for monarchy it's good for those who climb to the top of the greasy pole of politics to know there's still somebody above them. But if that somebody refuses to use any of the powers still available to her, then what is the point of being there?
verity, I can't agree with you about the monarchy. It is true that the Queen has done nothing to rein in the more disreputable antics of our elected politicians. I thought she should have intervened after Churchill's stroke, when he was clearly no longer up to the job and later when Callaghan, in an act of unparalleled cynicism, posponed the local government elections.
But realistically, her powers are very limited and any attempt at intervention would only serve to put fire in the republican belly. I think the last monarch who actively intervened in politics was George V when he strong-armed Labour and the Tories into a coalition government.
On a more practical note, I believe that in the USA an enormous amount of presidential time is taken up with state duties which in the UK are performed (very well) by the monarch.
It's truly depressing. But it's not even the start nor end of the problems with Parliamentary power dealers and the government at large. From Jack Straw indefinitely shelving referendum promises on electoral reform that have spanned 10 years without fruition, to the home secretary and brown seemingly playing a strategy of burying the plans to allow the home office to select it's own appointee's as coroners in some inquests; It's all just one step after the other of the state taking as much control as it can, leaving behind independent and impartial judgement, and infringing on our civil liberties while not allowing anyone to infringe on their privileges from outside of the playhouse.
I've never been more disenfranchised with the political system more than I have today.
On the subject of the Monarchy, its benefits & its failings:
There's widespread belief that the Crown passes by strict rule of heredity. That's just a custom & not a particularly old one. It can also be won at the point of a sword
Now there's food for thought in troubled times - anyone got a suit of armour & a horse they're not using at the moment?
Hmm David McLean. Remind me, wasn't he the Tory MP who wanted to amend the FOIA to ensure that all MPs' expenses could be kept secret?
What an absolute farce.
I don't think our revered Michael Martin wants people to look too closely into his own expenses either. Getting in 3 people as unlike Sherlock Holmes as possible will serve his purposes very well.
Sorry, Verity, I have to dissent from your views on this occasion. I'd rather have Liz or even Charlie as head of state than any of, shall we say, Nixon, Clinton or Bush (or indeed Mitterrand, Chirac or Sarkozy, or, especially, Blair or Brown). The real enemies of freedom are the Labour government under which we've been suffering for nearly 11 years.
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