Official: MPs Would Rob Taxpayers Blind, Given The Chance
The leeches and bloodsuckers who make up the assortment of otherwise unemployable has-beens and no-hopers of the mother of all Parliaments cannot be trusted with knowing how much their pilfering allowances might be, for fear that they would not be able to control their own lust for money, it has been revealed by one of their own number.
Commons finance chief Andrew Walker, in refusing to say what an MP could spend on one item an still get away with it, said: “My concern is that if we say the maximum price it will become the going rate.”
It is quite possible, therefore, that the tin of baked beans which MPs can buy with public money could, despite being available for between about 15 and 55 new pennies in a variety of shops, be claimed for to the tune of £249.99, as MPs are not required to submit a receipt for items valued at below 250 squid.
How many times a week can MPs make these spurious claims for non-existent expenditure at just below 250 pounds sterling? Nobody seems to have asked and probably nobody knows, but Andrew Walker admits that a system of oversight, checks and balances is not actually there at all.
“You don’t check they have actually spent the money on what they say they have spent it on - you just check the paper trail.”
We all know that MPs are not the cleverest people around, but perhaps somebody needs to tell this particular incompetent that if there is no need to offer a receipt, the paper trail goes pretty cold before it even starts.
But you knew that they are not really interested in controlling their own fleecing of the taxpayer, didn’t you? Whatever enquiry Michael Martin and his mates set in motion, you can be sure that it will conclude that everything is above board and satisfactory, but also noticing - quelle surprise! - that MPs are actually severely underpaid and need extra buckets of taxpayer swag to soften their arduous lives.
State Spongers Fear Pilfering Clampdown: The Little List Begins
There are vast legions of people in Britain who sponge off the hard work and tax money of the honest majority.
They are the creeping parasites who suck dry the savings and livelihoods of decent, hardworking citizens and their families. They filch every last penny from the state for frivolous, fraudulent schemes and fritter it away on bolstering a profligate lifestyle to which they are not entitled and which the taxpayer should not have to fund.
They are the scroungers and scavengers on the state, who are bleeding this country dry.
They have to be stopped.
As Peter Lilley said: “I have a little list”. Except this is not a list of single mothers and disabled people. This is the list of MPs and their families, acolytes, hangers-on and cheerleaders who are all deriving a living from the public purse at the expense of the taxpayer.
BBC News has this:
The row over Derek Conway’s use of his parliamentary allowances may have taken some of the heat off Labour as it continues to suffer from its funding crisis.
But, as the initial furore started to die down, the expression “a can of worms” could be heard echoing throughout Westminster.
And some backbenchers were expressing real fears that there may now be a prolonged and highly-damaging war of attrition as each side attempts to get the dirt on its opponents - something that will do little to rebuild the tarnished reputation of the Commons. [...]
But the fact that some MPs have recently been seen attempting to exempt themselves from freedom of information laws and that there have been ongoing disputes over exactly how transparent they should be over their finances seems to have boosted demands for complete openness.
If the feared war of attrition does indeed now break out, those demands are bound to get louder.
Oh, come on! Haven’t you spongers learnt the mantra you are always trying to foist on the public?
If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.
UPDATE:
The Guardian has this:
MPs should be subjected to greater checks on how they spend taxpayer-funded allowances, a sleaze watchdog said today in the wake of the Derek Conway affair.
Sir Christopher Kelly, chair of the committee on standards in public life, said that the Tory MP censured for paying his student son too much money had undermined public trust in politics.
And he did not rule out a possible future ban on MPs employing members of their families.
[...]
Kelly said: “This case is undoubtedly a very serious breach of parliamentary rules and further undermines public trust in our politicians.
“I understand why there are calls for rules to ban MPs employing members of their families, and indeed, there are international precedents for doing this, and it could be the right thing to do.
“However, it could also seem a rather harsh answer to the problem.
“An alternative approach would be to insist on greater transparency and proper monitoring of existing requirements which is generally better than creating new rules and prohibitions.”
He went on: “This is certainly an area which needs review. Before deciding on whether this is a task for my committee, I would want to see what action parliament itself proposes to take.
“I know that many MPs will share the view that the actions of a few can bring all of them into disrepute.”
It is doubtful whether the actions of a few MPs or the whole lot of them collectively could actually make them appear more disreputable than they already are. There are limits.
Fake War On Fake Terror
The thing about The War On Terror is that nobody actually believes any of it any more.
Nobody, that is, except politicians who have become so embedded in the rhetoric that they are actually inhabiting their concocted fantasy world, like a mentally unhinged method actor; along with their undiscriminating cheerleaders, for whom a politician’s pronouncement is a substitute for independent thought.
Simon Jenkins, in an article in The Guardian, has it just right. He finishes with this:
It is leaders, not bombers, who have the power to balk the advance of freedom. Already those leaders have used the war on terror to introduce the Patriot Act, Guantánamo Bay and a $1.5 trillion war in Iraq. In Pakistan they have used it as an excuse for emergency rule, the imprisonment of senior judges, and the provocation of unprecedented insurgency in the north-west frontier territories. In Britain leaders have used the war as an excuse for 42-day detention without trial, the world’s most intrusive surveillance state, and not one but two contested military occupations of foreign soil.
This so-called war on terror has filled the pockets of those profiting from it. It has killed thousands, immiserated millions and infringed the liberty of hundreds of millions. The only rough justice it has delivered is to ruin the careers of those who propagated it. Tony Blair was driven to early resignation. Bush has been humiliated and Musharraf’s wretched rule brought close to an overdue end. It may be an ill wind that blows no good, but it is hardly enough.
jsbachUSA responds:
It is absolutely, 100%, completely, totally IMPOSSIBLE for any organization (country, state, city, etc.) to protect its members from random acts of violence.
Unfortunately most people are extremely uncomfortable with the fact they could randomly die tomorrow, so they are willing to believe any fool that will lie to them and tell them that the fool has a “plan” that will somehow magically prevent so-called terror.
The reality is, out of 6 BILLION plus people on this earth, the number of crazy people that are trying to kill others for irrational reasons, numbers in the low thousands! Yes, that is the bare truth, the people that are out to kill you are a minuscule number of the people on the earth and there is nothing you can do about it.
No matter how many innocent people you kill, those irrational folks will still exist and just may succeed in killing you or someone you know.
We need to start putting the deaths from so-called terrorism in a better perspective. Sure there were 3000 “innocent” people killed on 9/11 but several orders of magnitude more “innocent” people have been killed in response. The US has more people killed every year from drunk drivers than were killed on 9/11. Is it sad they are dead? yes, but not the huge tragedy that it has been portrayed as. Lets face it, ALL HUMANS DIE sooner or later. Some die fairly young and others die much older (95 for the LDS Church President), but everyone dies. Death is not a big deal and we shouldn’t make more of it than it is.
The sad news is it takes an extremely brave and intelligent leader to bluntly say … “yes it is unfortunate that those people died, and in the future others will die, but there is nothing we can do to prevent it and in fact anything we do will be counterproductive and lead to more deaths. The only thing we can do is quietly hunt down and kill any of the perpetrators that are still alive, since the killers are already dead, there is nothing we can do to them. Fighting any type of war will not solve the problem.”
Bush is an egotistical fool and was able to take advantage of many scared fools to create a phony “war” that while it has succeeded in getting lots of people killed has not actually accomplished anything useful. The irrational idiots are still running around and will randomly kill again until they are killed themselves.
Until the people of the US, Israel UK, etc. realize they can never be safe, they will continue to make stupid decisions that only make their world LESS SAFE.
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