mp's expenses
 

so its been in the news for a few weeks now, the level of corruption and out and out greediness is quite astounding, 20,000 on a mortgage for a house that doesnt exist, thousands on furniture, cleaning, moat clearance! its actually making my blood boil to think about it.

what say you.

I wasn't overly tossed, and then they went and made a sacrificial lamb of the speaker. Obviously, it's easier to make a scapegoat of him than it is to point out the endemic cuntestry of the priveleged classes.

On the one hand, I quite often steal pens from work.

On the other hand, they aren't moat-cleaning pens paid for with my tax money that I'm stealing.

Generally, I am struggling to be outraged by the whole affair, as it's not really a new thing but the current journalistic vogue. It needed to happen, great, and there'll be some hang-wringing for a bit, but doubtless it'll be another quango or tier to the civil service that will inhibit (but not prevent) this happening again.

Have you noticed how Labour tend to be 'I'll stick a lick of paint on the company tab' while the Tories tend to be 'I'll stick a gold village in Germany on the company tab'?

What have Lib Dems been up to..?

i know its nothing new and its getting more press now than any other time. its still infuriating but not worth getting in a tis over i suppose. it is funny how the tories pay for tennis court heating and moat clearance and the rest claim for some other less twatish thing like knob polishing of some other.

some kind of collective biscuit game, we get the cleaning/psychiatrist bill.

Hahaha

Corruption in politics - it's hardly news.

The nation (except Glice, who simply tucks into another bowl of cornflakes) weeps over untrustworthy politicians, but has there ever been a time when the government has been trusted and respected?

Anyway, if we're going to hang them all, shouldn't it be for allowing the banking sector to get into the fucking mess that it's in right now, rather than for some relatively petty sleaze scandal.

Maybe you're right blunderbuss. But the banking fuck up suggests that they're incompetent while the expenses fiasco shows that they're corrupt and greedy which I would think is probably worse.

Also you say it's hardly news but this kind of stuff getting into the news and embarrassing them keeps politicians in line. This stuff needs to get into the news.

This is the thing with Martin going - I'm concerned that it's the same thing you get in large companies. I'm convinced a lot of company heads and sub-management exist solely to tack the flack for shit companies. Lop the CEO and the company carries on raping children to make M&S sandwiches (or whatever). It's too early to say, but I do suspect that there'll be a lot of hand-wringing, an 'independant board' set-up to review matters (thus further extending the civil service) and a new speaker that blusters about 'big changes' until something else hits the news (local elections, anyone?) and then they'll carry on be ever-so-slightly less corrupt.

I think if anything good does come of this, it'll be that the complicity of newspapers in Whitehall democracy will be heavily damaged, to the detriment of the hacks.

The other thing that hacks me off (and Stephen Fry has made a similar point link) is how the hacks are saying we'll 'lose trust in democracy'. No-one's that fucking stupid, except possibly Rupert Murdoch.

It's the problem of so-called career politicians: people without a single political idea, who see parliament simply as a corporation. It's easy to be cynical and say it's always been this way and yet while the career politician has always been there, it's only in the last twenty odd years that it's been accepted as the norm. Whatever people think of Thatcher, or Foot or even Kinnock, their motive to enter the political process was a political rather than careerist one, and those hoping simply for a free ride/lunch weren't tolerated. I mean have the Milliband brothers ever had a political idea in their lives? Cameron is more about winning elections (and keeping power once he has) than doing anything with that power that might potentially undermine his future prospects.

In terms of finance, the expenses scandal isn't that big an issue but it does point to a total arrogance amongst party members, an arrogance that only reinforces the sense that politics has become nothing other than a lucrative career move for a majority of those involved.

^
There was quite a well written piece on the yahoo blog about that kind of thing last week. I was almost moved to cheer as I read it.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/blog/talkin...article/24359/

I think this whole expenses row is a good thing, it is serving as a focal point for the general mistrust of politicians & their BS, and the political process that we have, it's been brewing for years. People's frustrations can't manifest themselves as voting apathy forever.

i just hope (blindly) that something actually happens about the whole thing. its interesting to see how many people say they dont really care all that much when its our money that is being spent on duck islands and lightbulbs. i suppose its a drop in the ocean compared to say an illegal war.

meh, he is still a fool but im in a different country and we have him as a pm so...go figure