Sarah Teather, MP for Brent East, writes passionately in today’s Guardian on the lack of reform in MPs’ expenses:
Every time I hear an MP found out for “flipping”, tax avoidance or profiteering argue they were just following the rules and that the rules now need to change I find myself yelling at the television: “Where were you when we had a chance to change the rules last summer? You were voting in the other lobby!”
The rules were (and still are) so vague that all manner of personal wealth creation on the public purse was perfectly possible. Believe it or not, even in my constituency, just half an hour from Westminster, I am eligible to claim £24k for a second home and all the trappings. I have never claimed as it would be utterly outrageous to do so, but plenty of London MPs have with wild abandon.
What I can’t understand is how some MPs thought this or other practices gracing the papers this week were ever a good idea. How did they not realise that sooner or later people would find out they had a second home 40 minutes from their first one, both in easy commuting distance of parliament? Or that they’d renovated the bathroom in several properties at our expense by flipping? Or that they’d used taxpayers’ money to clean a swimming pool? What planet were they living on when they thought the British public would wear this?
You can read the full piece in the Guardian.
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One Comment
“What planet were they living on when they thought the British public would wear this?”
The same one were only 3% of the country are members for a political party..
The same one were over 50% of the population will NOT vote..
The same one were we can be consistently and empirically duped by the Conservative party…
LIED to by the Labour party…
Go through one of the LARGEST recessions EVER when 90% of the population has never dealt with Goldman Sachs OR RBS on a stakeholder level…
Use OUR money to bail these PRIVATE banks…
And yet still have the lowest turnout for protest then ANY European country…
Yet, we still do nothing….and nothing…and nothing..
So lets see? Why would the MP’s have any respect for us when we don’t even respect ourselves?
This is nothing new. Has happened for yonks.
More and less the same with the public and it’s government.
So Sarah, as much as I agree with your sentiments…what does the public expect when we on a HUGELY societal level profess that “we’re not interested in politics”, “I’m not polictical” and “Nah, nothing to with me that”…