Like most people today*, I’ve had a quick squint at my MPs’ receipts that have now been published, thanks to a FoI request, on the parliament website.
The following picture is a snapshot of one of the .pdf’s and seems fairly typical (click to enlarge)…
What bloody good is that? You can only presume the two bits go together by the total, as on the proper receipt even the name of the company is blanked out. Why is that? Why can’t we know the company that issued the receipt?
Why are the items blanked out? Why aren’t we allowed to know what the £64 was actually spent on?
All that tells us is that Dr Evan Harris spent £64 on something from a company that might be called Caudwell Communications.
I can understand the blacking out of an MPs’ phone number or most of their address, though there is no reason to black that out completely as just leaving us with the town or city would be enough to give some scrutiny. But to leave a receipt with just a total figure and present it as being open and transparent is just complete bollox. The receipt could be for a bucket of used condoms from ‘Cocks R Us’. How would we know?
MPs’ reckoned they were sorry. My fucking arse, are they. Even when told to be open and transparent, they still try to cover up. They knew they had been milking the system, it was never ‘sloppy accounting’ or errors of judgement, as we were kept being assured.
If it hadn’t been for the Telegraph, these money grabbing shits would’ve been able to blag their way to keeping their seats and their reputations (ha!) thanks to a metaphorical black marker.
It’s called a Freedom of Information request, dummy. So lets have some information.
*actually, most people are probably having a long hard look.
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