Everyone pretty much accepts that MP should have expenses, but those expenses should be for stuff needed for the duties of an MP.
What the cunting fuck are these shower of shits doing claiming for swimming pools, piano tuning, stables, moat cleaning (a fucking moat, for christ sake!), chandelier hanging and home improvement by the addition of a portico.
In an example of how seriously these wankers take the system, Micheal Spicer…
submitted a detailed invoice which included “hedge cutting … helipad”, although he claimed last night that the “helipad” was a “family joke”.
What sort of cunt jokes on expenses claims? What sort organisation doesn’t question it?
And then there’s Stewart Jackson…
claimed more than £300 for work on a swimming pool, and hundreds more for work to a “summer room”. Last night he agreed to repay the money claimed for the swimming pool.
In a lengthy statement he said in his defence Jackson said :”The pool came with the house and I needed to know how to run it.
“Once I was shown that one time, there were no more claims. I take care of the pool myself. I believe this represents ‘value for money’ for the taxpayer, as required by the Green Book [the Commons rulebook on claiming expenses.
He may have needed to know how to run the pool, but why should the fucking taxpayer pay for some cunt to tell him? Is it going to make him work harder or better? It might be better value to pay someone to show Jackson how to look after the pool rather than pay for an engineer to come out whenever something needs doing, but what value is it adding to his performance as an MP? Fucking none. A swimming pool is not needed to do an MP’s job.
The expenses should be for stuff that an MP needs.
- If they’ve got a home in their constituency and one in london then they shouldn’t be allowed to claim a second home allowance, as they already have a second home and would be paying the bills and stuff on it anyway
- If they don’t have a second home already, they should be able to either claim, upto a certain amount, enough for say a two bed flat, either rent or mortgage interest.
- If a flat is bought/rented, then a contribution, not a full reimbursement, towards furniture would be allowed. The definition of furniture being tables, chairs, a cooker, fridge, bed, curtains and that type of thing. Stuff that makes a building livable. Not vases and pictures and items that make a home homely.
- There needs to be some way of closing down the loophole that enables ‘flipping’, the swapping of second home designations between homes at a drop of a hat. Maybe the definition needs to be changed to the first home being where the MPs’ spouse/partner & children (if any) are based, and for single MP’s some other definition that rules out flipping.
- Food expenses either to be cut severely or to be done away with completely. £400 a month for food shopping is ridiculous. A family of 4 lives very nicely on that.
My preferred choice of solution would be for the government to buy a stock of flats and let the MPs’ use them. To keep the ‘small state’ people happy, the government could lease some from a private company (based in some tax haven, of course) under a PFI project.
Nobody can reasonably expect an MP, who because of the very nature of the job has to live in two places, not to have expenses, but when MP’s abuse the rule and expect the taxpayer to pay for stuff that is not related to the job, from cleaning out moats (a moat, FFS!) to babies nappies, then the rules need to be tightened and their receipts scrutinised even closer.
‘The honourable member’ indeed, ffs.
And no, it’s not a party thing.
Fuck their second homes, fuck paying for their TVs and their food “expenses” and fuck buying them fucking flats!
The solution is surely for parliament to block lease a few hundred rooms (for just the 100+ days the HoC is sitting) in PremierInn hotels? I bet they’ll get them for around £50 a night.
Overnight I suspect many MPs living just outside the M25 will rediscover the joys of commuting!
That would be my prefered option too, buy a block of flats.
It would stop the fiddling in one go. But I can’t really see them going for that tbh.
Oh, and welcome to my blog. :-)