Dizzy blogs this morning that the cost of printing Early Day Motions has now gone over £1 million a year. This is ridiculous. I question why they need to be printed at all. Why can't they all be put on the Parliament website and MPs can add their names electronically? It makes total sense. There can surely be no argument against it.
In a week when we have found the government cutting £500,000 funding from the Missing People charity, it is simply wrong to spend double that amount on the equivalent of parliamentary graffit, whose only purpose seems to be to serve the egos of the MPs who sign them. Well, an exaggeration possibly but you know what I mean.
The EU is taking over the role of Missing People - with its new and powerful agency called on the neaded notepaper, ''Missing Children Europe'', which is in fact called, with its full bureaucratic title, ''The European Federation for Missing and Sexually Exploited Children.''
ReplyDeleteThey are able to receive and investigate allegations made by citizens on each other, so the children don't even need to be missing, before this powerful bureaucracy can intervene in the private life of families.
The last thing they want are any charities able to operate in the same area. Europe wants our missing children for itself, and our abused ones.
How about getting rid of them altogether - all they are is Lobbyist fodder who lead the hapless constituents into thinking they are legislation. When I inform constituents otherwise they are shocked.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of wasted money.
ReplyDeleteDoes anybody remember that before the election it was very much in the air that following a Conservative victory all public sector job adverts would be published online, instead of in the left's in-house paper, the Guardian. Hundreds of millions of pounds are wasted every year (or should I say, put into the coffers of the deficit deniers).
This was supposed to apply to all public sector jobs, including councils and, most appropriately, the BBC.
Without this income the Guardian would be in enormous trouble.
However, since the election I haven't heard a peep.
Does anybody know if this is still intended to be done? And if not, why not?
Wasting money?
ReplyDeleteSimon Barnett gives a cost benefit analysis of future UK spending towards combating 'Global Warming'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28bRgmwecKE
Now that it is virtually impossible to utter more than five syllables on the floor of the House without being interrupted by tiny Bercow, I suppose most MPs will grab any opportunity to register a coherent opinion without being cut off by a character from pantomime.
ReplyDeleteReally though EDMs are little more than the tool of lobbyists - a way of showing something "tangible" to the client and pocketing the fee, having wisely first taken the precaution of not telling the client that such motions are all but meaningless.
Which reminds me: what became of Mr Cameron's assault on the lobbying industry?
You try and get all MPs to agree to not use EDMs. You'll have more success herding cats. MPs love them for the publicity they can generate.
ReplyDeleteThe simplest way to devalue EDMs is not to publish them so quickly and widely. Maybe just publish them once a month.