local MP does a runner after being quizzed on £19k expenses claim for food

[Aberdeen Shrimper]

That's the system's fault though not his surely?

I'm sure if our respective employer's offered to pay for all our food on expenses every single one of us would take them up on the offer.

Totally agree DS of course we would, everyone has all of a sudden become holier than thou.

 

[Benfleet A1]

Totally agree DS of course we would, everyone has all of a sudden become holier than thou.

Whats holier than thou? You honestly have no problem with your tax money being spent on things other than improving the country and quality of life. I understand the MP in your neck of the woods needing a second home and claiming for travel expenses but buggered if I understand why MP's living less than 50 miles away require another home at our expense. Whats the matter with a hotel for the night or even a taxi home. A damn site cheaper than £23000 a year out of mine and your pocket. And I resent even more the fact that our tax money furnishes the place as well. It's morally wrong and in the present climate almost criminally wrong. And in some cases it will be proved to be very much so.

 

[Aberdeen Shrimper]

Whats holier than thou? You honestly have no problem with your tax money being spent on things other than improving the country and quality of life. I understand the MP in your neck of the woods needing a second home and claiming for travel expenses but buggered if I understand why MP's living less than 50 miles away require another home at our expense. Whats the matter with a hotel for the night or even a taxi home. A damn site cheaper than £23000 a year out of mine and your pocket. And I resent even more the fact that our tax money furnishes the place as well. It's morally wrong and in the present climate almost criminally wrong. And in some cases it will be proved to be very much so.

I am not saying that what they have done is right, I am simply saying that it is easy for everyone to jump on the band wagon and demand a lynching, and if the truth be known, a lot of people who are berating the MP's, given the opportunity would not turn down the chance of getting some expenses from their employer to pay for things like travel to work, home maintenance, child care, etc etc.

My MP rode the gravy train like a lot of them did and now has been found out and I am sure that the public will decide his fate, as he lives about 10 doors down, I will be asking him if i can borrow the £500 duvet and pillow set that he purchased, considering I helped pay for it!! He is not whiter than white but then again who is?

Yet he throw the first stone who is without sin!

 

[RobM]

£100 a week for food? Must like lobster a lot.

 

[fredheim_holm]

As taxpayers, that makes you and me his employers and I don't remember giving the green light for him or any other MP to use my money for his/her own gain.

To be fair though we did collectively give the green light for these people to make these decisions so indirectly you did, GHG.

 

[Aberdeen Shrimper]

£100 a week for food? Must like lobster a lot.

A family of 5 would get through that no problem. I wish I could afford to spunk £100 a week on food. Was that including take outs as well?

 

[OldBlueLady]

£100 a week doesn't even cover essentials. I spend at least £20 a week just on fresh fruit and veg, then about £6 a week on milk a fiver on bread products and that's before you put any protein or other carbs in your basket, let alone stuff for household chores.

 

[Aberdeen Shrimper]

I have just been corrected, we spend between £100 and £125 a week on the Tesco shop......JEEEEEEEEEEEZZZZZZ

That is going to stop.

 

[OldBlueLady]

I'm not surprised about your shopping, if I spend under £150 then I reckon I've done well being as none of them like naff coke or cereal so it's all branded stuff.

 

[Benfleet A1]

To be fair though we did collectively give the green light for these people to make these decisions so indirectly you did, GHG.

No I didn't. I voted for someone to represent me in the Houses of Parliament who would carry out my wishes as to how the country should be run. I also accepted that the person I voted for didn't win and therefore he/she who did would represent the majority, thats democracy. What I didn't vote for was for MP's to help themselves to expenses at my expense that would benefit them and not the country. That is what I am against and my vote next Thursday will highlight that fact. I am not so fickle to imagine that there would be no expenses chargeable to the tax payer but I resent paying for gardening, furnishing, toilet seats, fencing, photos, cleaning moats, duck houses, or someones dry rot when the rest of the nation has to pay for their own. As much as it pains me to say it my own MP has come out of this pretty clean with most of her expenses being spent on stationary and looking after her constituates (and believe me when I say it stings to say that) but that doesn't excuse the others who have ripped us off. Sorry just doesn't cut it anymore and paying it back just rubs salt into the wound. If they can afford to pay it back straight away then ask yourself just how much has been hidden away in the first place.

I didn't give them permission to do this in the first place and to consider your vote as a green light to do so is blinkered to the extreme.

 

[OldBlueLady]

In all seriousness, GHG is right of course, it always has been one rule for them and another for the rest of us though and the sooner the whole of Parliament pledges to reform the "rights" of its members the better.

 

[Aberdeen Shrimper]

No I didn't. I voted for someone to represent me in the Houses of Parliament who would carry out my wishes as to how the country should be run. I also accepted that the person I voted for didn't win and therefore he/she who did would represent the majority, thats democracy. What I didn't vote for was for MP's to help themselves to expenses at my expense that would benefit them and not the country. That is what I am against and my vote next Thursday will highlight that fact. I am not so fickle to imagine that there would be no expenses chargeable to the tax payer but I resent paying for gardening, furnishing, toilet seats, fencing, photos, cleaning moats, duck houses, or someones dry rot when the rest of the nation has to pay for their own. As much as it pains me to say it my own MP has come out of this pretty clean with most of her expenses being spent on stationary and looking after her constituates (and believe me when I say it stings to say that) but that doesn't excuse the others who have ripped us off. Sorry just doesn't cut it anymore and paying it back just rubs salt into the wound. If they can afford to pay it back straight away then ask yourself just how much has been hidden away in the first place.

I didn't give them permission to do this in the first place and to consider your vote as a green light to do so is blinkered to the extreme.

Just or example......... if it was a load of top executives working for a company like Shell, BP, BT, SKY etc and a s**t storm of a story hit the papers about these top executives taking the complete **** with expenses, would that be more palatable?

 

[Benfleet A1]

Just or example......... if it was a load of top executives working for a company like Shell, BP, BT, SKY etc and a s**t storm of a story hit the papers about these top executives taking the complete **** with expenses, would that be more palatable?

No it wouldn't but the difference is that privately owned companies do not cost the tax payer nana, parliament does so I have a major problem with that. I choose to have Sky TV, I choose to buy petrol at Shell or BP and I choose to get my phone connection from BT, I accept that from profit making companies, the Houses of Parliament is not profit making other than from our tax contributions that go towards the running of the country not MP's expenses on second homes and freebies that the rest of us cannot claim legal or otherwise.

 

[Aberdeen Shrimper]

No it wouldn't but the difference is that privately owned companies do not cost the tax payer nana, parliament does so I have a major problem with that. I choose to have Sky TV, I choose to buy petrol at Shell or BP and I choose to get my phone connection from BT, I accept that from profit making companies, the Houses of Parliament is not profit making other than from our tax contributions that go towards the running of the country not MP's expenses on second homes and freebies that the rest of us cannot claim legal or otherwise.

Good point, I will concede this one to you

 

[dloman]

Personally i am not as concerned with some of the expenses claimed (food etc) more about the blatent attempts by certain members of parliament to appear to try and defraud the HM revenue out of capital gains tax. Think it has been mainly labour MP's in the main but surely this is a more serious and criminal offence.

 

[RobM]

OBL that's £100 a week for one person, not a family!
I live alone and there's no way I spend that a week. To put that into context, I had a meal at my partner's last night - we had venison steaks, scampi, mussels, scallops, veg' and a bottle of red - that came to about £20 for us both and there was some left over for lunch today. That was extravagant but it shows my point.

 

[Andyhsufc]

Sadly, it appears that a significant minority of MPs were on the take at taxpayers expense. I think the first thing we have got to do is cut the number of MPs which should have the effect of raising the standard of them and lowering the cost. For example, there are currently 17 constituencies in Essex (inc. Southend and Thurrock Authorities) which I think could easily be cut to 7 or 8

 

[Sussex Shrimper]

It's a problem borne of the way in which expenses are considered to be in lieu of salary. MPs don't feel that they are paid enough, so they set about using their expenses to top it up. It wouldn't surprise me at all if there were MPs who could have made claims for less dodgy looking expenses, but didn't worry overly given that most claims would be approved with a knowing wink from the Fees Office and there was previously no way for us to know how our money was being spent.

When you boil it down it all comes back to the same point anyway: our public "servants" not being prepared to be upfront with us. We desperately need a mechanism by which we can recall MPs during a parliamentary term so that we can mete out the same punishment that we would to anybody else in our employ who set about thieving from us.