Order! Order! Order More Money For The Pig Trough!

Posted on February 5, 2008
Filed Under Politics |

You know the one who sits in the big high chair in the House of Commons? The one who always looks like a derelict wino or bag lady who has just been startled from her slumbers underneath a pile of old discarded blankets and who then starts shouting?

That is not a vagrant, passing the afternoon in a stupor after downing a bellyful of Special Brew, but the Speaker of the House, at the moment in the shape of Michael Martin. The office is sometimes seen as the First Commoner of the Land, which you might think makes him the chap to stand up for the rights and interests of the ordinary citizen within Parliament.

Ha! Ha! Not a bit of it, although with the current interest throughout the land in the degree to which MPs are robbing taxpayers blind, he is making the following token effort:

Mr Martin said: “In the debate [on Mr Derek Conway’s suspension for being caught fiddling his taxpayer-funded allowances by paying his sons excessive wages for doing absolutely nothing under the guise of being researchers]  several Members expressed deep concerns about Members’ allowances. Similar anxiety about the audit system has been relayed to me privately. We must also take fully into account the public interest in transparency.

“The subject of members’ allowances is something which the House itself must determine but it is clear that the committee must find an effective and acceptable solution as soon as is practicable.”

The problem here is whether you would trust this bunch of poachers to also act as impartial gamekeepers.

Would you trust a bunch of convicted terrorists or paedophiles not to re-offend just on their own say-so? Or would you be right to imagine that they would simply carry on with their sins, but find new ways to conceal them?

Obviously, we can be sure that the person who is going to set the ball rolling in order to make the taxpayer-funded perks of MPs more transparent is neither fiddling the books nor has any fingers in or near the till.

Oh, dear, perhaps not. The TimesOnilne has this:

Mr Martin, from Glasgow, was a sheet metal worker, became a trade union organiser and entered Parliament for Labour in 1979.

The Speaker receives £137,579 in pay, as well as a grace-and-favour appartment inside the Parliamentary Estate which Commons authorities claim has not been separately valued.

Last month The Times disclosed that his wife, Mary, had claimed £4,280.20 for taxis since May 2004, which were “entirely in connection with household expenditure that supports the Speaker’s duties”. According to the Speaker’s spokesman, she needs to take taxis to shop for food for official functions. The wife of the Speaker has never had a formal role before.

Subsequently it emerged that nearly £50,000 of taxpayers’ money had been spent on providing free air travel for Mrs Martin. She had been given permission to claim travel expenses when her husband became Speaker in 2000. Mrs Martin received £24,485 for foreign flights when accompanying her husband on ten official trips over three years from 2004.

Naturally, this is not to say that Michael Martin or any other MP has done anything illegal or in contravention of the high standards which we as citizens and taxpayers should be able to expect from our public servants.

It could be, for example, that he is provided with magnificent and luxurious apartments within the Palace (in Wonderland) of Westminster and still feels the need to claim - what? - shall we say about seventeen thousand squid a year for another place to live. That, of course, would be entirely proper and above board. 

Scotland on Sunday has this:

Martin has previously employed his wife Mary as his constituency secretary. He declined to answer questions from former Independent MP Martin Bell in 2004 about how much she was paid and the exact nature of her work. And for the past nine years, he has employed his daughter, also called Mary, to work in his constituency office in Springburn.

Asked why his daughter Mary got the job, Martin’s spokesman said: “She’s trained in office administration, has been active in the constituency and has worked with the family in the constituency. In short, she makes an excellent candidate for the job.”

Martin declined to say how much his daughter was paid. He also declined to say why his housing allowance had steadily risen from £6,106 in 2004-05 to £9,551 in 2005-06 and £17,166 in 2006-07. The Speaker classifies his ‘main home’ as his grace-and-favour apartment in Westminster and the expenditure is on his home in Glasgow.

His spokesman said: “Every claim he makes is scrutinised by a very senior member of the finance department to make sure it is justified. His costs have risen, so his claims have risen and they have been approved in the proper way.”

Presumably, Michael Martin is also allowed to claim cash expenses for items up to £250 without the need for a receipt, like all MPs.

Try this one at home: Go to your boss and say you have taken £250 out of petty cash for expenses. When he asks you what it was for, just say you cannot remember and you have lost the receipt. Try doing this every day until you get the sack, which will probably happen the first time you try it.

As a member of the public who commented on the TimesOnline article said:

These people think they are more royal than the Royals but outside Parliament they’d be on benefits, fiddling them as well.

Harry Kennard, Peasmarsh , England

Quite so. The problem is, though, how else are you going to get people to enter politics if they only earn fifty times what ordinary people have to manage on.

They are, after all, the intellectual and moral cream of society and not just a bunch of hoodwinking pickpockets whose only interest is filching money from hardworking taxpayers.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you keep informed by subscribing to the RSS feed! Also, look for the links (top right) to listen to or download the available podcasts.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Related Posts

Comments

Share your ignorance insights with the rest of the world.




Bad Behavior has blocked 228 access attempts in the last 7 days.