9:57am Friday 5th June 2009
THE debate over politicians’ expenses rumbles on fuelled by the gleeful media. The whole farrago started when the government of the day lacked the courage to present to the public salary increases for MPs that might appear excessive to the man on the Clapham omnibus but which, in the world of business, would have been considered modest.
It is pointless to compare the salary of your elected MP with that of a nurse or teacher, however tempting it can be to highlight the difference in their perceived contribution to society.
The blunt truth is that an MP does have to maintain an office with staff and in many cases does have to run two homes in order to function in both constituency and Parliament.
However, in a pusillanimous attempt to disguise what was intended to be a salary increase, an expenses system was constructed with 'nod and a wink' encouragement to claim expenses up to an amount that made the total salary acceptable.
A culture then developed in which as long as you had a bit of paper with proof of expenditure on it that fitted the jigsaw of the claimant’s intended total payment expectation, then you just chucked it at the appropriate office and waited for the money. Some, but not all, of the utterly preposterous claims were rejected.
It may well be that any reluctance to appear dishonest was quietened by the belief that they were merely receiving their proper salary via a different mechanism, but if a better honey trap could ever be set up, I don’t know what it is.
And the thing that this ludicrous bait threw up with clarity beyond the greatest anarchist’s possible expectation is just how stupid these people are whom we have elected to represent us in Parliament.
No one thought about the possible reaction of a citizen whose tax office had disallowed as an expense the newspaper on his hotel bill.
No one said (loudly enough anyway) ‘Hang on, not only is this ridiculous, it is suicidal’. And if they weren’t bright enough to see the potential electoral meltdown ahead of them, then they simply aren’t the right people for the job.
Maybe this self-inflicted cull will leave us with the MPs who have that winning combination of intelligence, dignity, principles and scruples. The inner London ones are just lucky, despite what they may have thought originally, as the gravy train chugged by!
© Copyright 2001-2012 Newsquest Media Group
http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/trade_directory/