TAKE, TAKE, TAKE, IN THE BUDGET; GIVE, GIVE, GIVE TO MPS

There are good things and bad things in life, some very closely associated. For example, it is good that ice cream is so delicious, and bad that it makes us fat; it is good that a glass of wine with dinner after a hard day’s work is a relaxant, and it is bad that some people, having had one glass, can’t stop till the glass crashes to the floor as they fall off their chair.

And so it is with our Westminster MPs. It’s good that we can always count on them to be generous. Unfortunately, the pity is that we can only count on them to be generous to themselves.

So it was with sadness but little surprise that I heard of the decision, after months of whining and moaning and gnashing of teeth, along with horror stories about the £66,000 salary not being enough, and these poor people forced to travel second class on public transport and not have their children up to London (it’s always “up” to London, Oxford and Cambridge, have you noticed?), that it has been announced that the rules on MPs’ expenses are to be relaxed. (Didn't take that long, did it?)

The subject was little mentioned in the run up to the election, except by the party leaders who, to a man, were adamant that the end to greed had come upon Westminster. But within weeks of MPs securing their almost triple average national wage salaries for a job that largely involves being rowdy and nodding their heads, they were back to demanding a better deal for themselves.

And so the day after they announced that despite the fact that last winter 9 elderly people died every hour in the UK due to cold related illness, they were going to reduce the allowance given to the old for heating, it was announced that MP would receive more generous expenses. Well, thank goodness none of them will die of the cold next winter, for what would we do without them? Hmm

Under the reforms, MPs with families will be able to claim up to £2,500 extra for each child under 18 to cover the additional costs of a larger second home to accommodate them. I wonder what an extra £2,500 would mean to a pensioner on £6,000 a year... 1/11 of an MP’s salary!

Also MPs who live within what would normally be considered reasonable commuting distance for "ordinary people" (a woman on the Richard Wilson documentary on British trains commuted from Reading at a cost of £4,000 a year), will now be allowed to have second homes in Westminster. So back to how it was before, because we can’t have VIPs standing around on stations waiting for 2nd class carriages on trains that are regularly late, cancelled or at best either overcrowded or dangerous.

Everyone is tightening their belts; everyone is hurting, apart from the royals, the lords and the bankers, everyone is feeling the pain of the financial sector’s excesses. We are all in this together, but at the same time, to make MPs' precious wee lives easier, and so an unspecified amount of what we have saved by making it more difficult for MPs to thieve from us, is to be given back to them.

One of these days the worm will turn. We just can’t go on and on getting slapped in the face...

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In fairness to Dundee MPs, when the pay rise was announced last year Jim McGovern said that we would refuse it and Stewart Hosie said that he would take it and give the money he received to a local charity. Both were commendable (although the latter meant that the money came to Dundee, whereas the former left the money in the UK exchequer to be spent 9/10 in England). I trust they will continue to take a decent attitude and won’t be claiming a penny more in expenses because the party leaders and that ridiculous little fop of a speaker have folded their tents to demands by MPs for more more more. For certain I’ll vote for no one who shows greed in this matter while “ordinary people” are going without.

Put A Chrysler Sunbeam in Your Life for 30p a Gallon: Never Again, says AA.

According to the AA, petrol prices are unlikely ever to go below £1.10 a litre in Scotland again, even though costs are on their way down and we are an oil rich nation. The reason is a combination of increasing fuel duty from London, and Opec’s measures to keep oil prices reasonable high, usually by restricting its supply. The organisation argues that we will never see prices fall below £1.

History shows that petrol in this country has, allowing for inflation, kept normally within a fairly narrow band price wise. But today, at an average price of around £1.20 a litre, the cost is about 40% higher than the long-term trend.

There have been two periods in the past 108 years when prices have been so high. In the mid to late 50s, shortly after a post-war period of petrol rationing ended, they were as high as today. And during the First War they were the equivalent of about £1.90 litre. Of course as only the aristocracy could afford cars at that time, it wasn’t a huge issue for the likes of you and me.

Since the end of the 90s, crude oil has doubled in price, making this the main cause for fuel increases for the past decade. However, ten years ago, a government report found that, between 1990 and 1999, the price of North Sea oil fell 30%, yet fuel prices rose about 30%, and this was partly attributed to taxation. Today, 75p of the £1.20 that we pay for unleaded goes to the London exchequer.

So it's a combination of both plus greed of the oil producers that has caused our rapidly growing prices. This year we've had all of these. On 1 January 1 VAT went back up to 17.5%, which added a couple of pence to the cost of petrol. An increase to fuel duty and a scrapped subsidy has added about 2p extra from the beginning of April (with more due to come later in the year). Plus, according to the AA, wholesale prices went up 17% this year so far, which has put another 5p on top.

Petrol here is probably the most expensive in the world. I wonder if anyone reading this has noticed any country where it costs more...

As we couldn’t let a whole week go by without a wee bit of Petula, I thought that it might be an idea to look at how much petrol cost back in the late 70s.... well in this ad for a Chrysler Sunbeam, it’s 30p a gallon... about 7p a litre......

Oh happy days....


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PS: Pic for Brownlie (nice legs, huh?). Promise I'll do Peggy Lee soon!

THEIR JOBS CONCERN WATER, BUT THEY PREFER CHAMPAGNE AT YOUR EXPENSE

What in the name of goodness is it that makes people think that, the moment they can lay their hands upon the public’s money, they have carte blanche to spend it any old how they want, on luxuries for themselves?

According to an article in the Herald the Water Industry Commission for Scotland (WICS), set up to keep water bills down, has spent tens of thousands of our pounds on trips to luxury resorts, expensive dinners and sporting treats for its staff.

They spent almost £25,000 on a visit to a five-star hotel in England (why England?) and over £3,000 on hospitality at the Edinburgh’s New Club. Further there were Christmas parties and a wine-tasting event.

The WICS was set up in 2005 to encourage Scottish Water to reduce prices (Why can't the government just tell them to do it?) It has six commissioners including a chairman and a chief executive and 23 staff funded mainly by Scottish Water.

In 2007, it spent £14,616 on a staff awayday at Hamilton Park Racecourse, including two overnights in a top Glasgow hotel, a nightclub visit, champagne reception and luxury foods. Then 25 of them went to a seminar at a five-star hotel and spa again in England, all of which cost you and me £24,286.

In 2009, to mark the completion of a piece of work, staff were treated to a £3,500 celebration at around £40 a head. (I thought that reward for work was a salary?) There was a party at Rufflets Hotel, St Andrews costing £9,088 in 2008 and another costing £8,427 last December. Football matches and wine tasting evenings also figure in the entertainment you have been providing for these clearly VERY special people. An analyst was given £1,796 for flights between the UK and Switzerland so that he could see his family at weekends. Awwwww.

A Glasgow SNP MSP Bill Kidd said: “This is nothing more than jollies on a grand scale......... Once again the arrogance, insensitivity and downright greed of public service fat-cats is exposed, and it really needs to be addressed.”

David Whitton, Labour’s shadow finance spokesman, said that he was absolutely astonished that a public body felt it could spend money this way and suggested that officials at the WICS should explain their spending in front of the parliament’s finance committee.

I’m almost speechless. I read in other papers that Westminster is considering putting VAT on food to try to pay off some of the debt that Labour has run up and on the same day I’m reading about people who spend more than the royal family on their food... and we are paying for it.

I agree with Mr Whitton. Haul these people before the finance committee of Parliament and let’s hear all about what a set of greedy self-serving pigs they are.

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ROUND AND ROUND AND ROUND IT GOES; WHERE IT STOPS NOBODY KNOWS

I was listening to the news today with growing incredulity.

Early on I heard that councils throughout the UK were expected to make big savings over the next 5 years. A survey, carried out by the BBC and concentrating mainly on England (surprise) but also having effects in the Celtic countries, showed that most councils expected to lose large numbers of jobs, and could expect to see severe reductions in services.

The first cuts will affect the least essential, but still important services like leisure, parks, swimming baths, libraries, etc., but old people’s accommodations and social services cuts cannot be ruled out as time goes on. Birmingham in England, the second largest local authority in the UK expects to lose 2000 jobs, and cannot realistically expect to do this with voluntary redundancies and recruitment freezes.

I was reflecting that at least locally, libraries play a vital part in the lives of some of the poorer people in the city. They provide facilities for those who have no internet access at home. Kids who need to use the net to access information for school projects, unemployed people looking for work, older people who can’t afford computers and wouldn’t know how to set them up use the facilities of libraries throughout the town. They host reading groups for young children and facilities for people with learning difficulties; they run courses more easily accessible and less daunting than the college or the universities. And for some it is a warm place to sit on a cold day. And imagine closing down swimming baths, or reducing access to them, just as we were being told that the Olympics in London were going to be of immense benefit to us all; likewise all the other sporting facilities provided by the local parks department and the community centres.

As I reflected I thought about why we are in this recession. Of course (sorry Danny) it’s all America’s fault... according to Brown, but I have a recollection of Northern Rock having a loan book that even a Glasgow moneylender with access to leg breaking equipment wouldn’t touch. And I remember that RBS was up there lending to people who hadn’t a hope in hell of paying the money back, and who would make restitution to the bank only on the sale of their now much more expensive property....until, woops, the property bubble burst. So no, it was our bankers as much as it was theirs.... Much of this mess is down to bankers and financial institutions.

So I’m betting you can imagine how I was feeling tonight when I noticed that a certain Mr Gulliver of HSBC was awarded a £9 million bonus on top of his £800,000 base pay for “exceptional performance" in trebling the profits of his division to $10.5 billion.

OK this is an extreme case and HSBC didn’t take money from the government, but all over the banking sector, it’s back to business, like all this silliness of the last few years never happened. Last week, Stephen Hester, chief executive of RBS gave up his bonus but the state-owned bank revealed it paid at least two of its bankers more than £7 million in 2009.

It’s another of these moments when you ask yourself.... is this a dream? They were greedy; they got into a mess; we bailed them out; because we have bailed them out we don’t have any money and we have to do without basics; and they got greedy again.....

OK. I know it’s not quite that simple, but it’s not far off....

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HERE'S TO YOU MRS ROBINSON, JESUS LOVES YOU MORE THAT YOU WILL KNOW. HO HO HO

Iris Robinson MP, MLA, and wife of Northern Ireland’s First Minister, has admitted that she tried to kill herself after confessing that she had had an affair. Mr Robinson said he was determined to save his marriage and insisted that he would stay on as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party.

Nine days ago Mrs Robinson declared that she was quitting politics because of a battle with depression. Speculation has been rife since then about further revelations. Mr Robinson has not been at his office since Christmas, sparking anger when he failed to comment on the death of Cardinal Daly and failed to attend his funeral.

During a period of mental illness Mrs Robinson said that she lost control of her life and did the worst thing that she had ever done. She said that the affair had no emotional or lasting meaning. She said: “Psychiatrists may suggest that my mental illness was a significant factor explaining my irrational behaviour. I do not in any way question or doubt their judgment. But in order to master my life I do not want to dilute the blame or resist taking full responsibility for my actions. I am completely ashamed and deeply embarrassed.”

She disclosed how at midnight on March 1 last year she tried to take her own life when she confessed to the affair because of the guilt that she felt. Hours later her husband was at the dispatch box answering questions at the Northern Ireland Assembly.

In 2008 Mrs Robinson courted controversy when she claimed in the House of Commons, that homosexuality was an abomination and it made her feel sick and nauseous. In a subsequent interview she defended her views saying that "just as a murderer can be redeemed by the blood of Christ, so can a homosexual.... If anyone takes issue, they're taking issue with the word of God.” She added: “There can be no viler act, (apart from homosexuality and sodomy) than sexually abusing innocent children.”* So, she said that homosexuality was worse than paedophilia? That’s some statement to make.

In June 2009 Mrs Robinson and her husband were criticised when it became known that they had between them salaries and expenses of £571,939.41 with a further £150,000 going in salaries to members of their families.

Now I respect people’s religious views and I even respect the right of an MP to express these personal views in a public way, although it must have been a pretty embarrassing moment for her husband. However, as Mrs Robinson’s life is so clearly directed by the teachings of the Bible, could I remind her that adultery is a sin. “Thou shalt not commit adultery” is, if I remember aright, the seventh commandment. And aren’t there numerous referenced in the Bible to riches and their incompatibility with godliness? For example, “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Matthew 19:24. Further could I just remind her that attempted suicide is against the "natural order" and thus interferes with God's master plan for the world? Those who succeed in killing themselves can not be buried in consecrated ground.

I wonder if Mrs Robinson has a clear idea of what the word hypocrite means?

* Information from Wikipedia

THIS IS CHRISTMAS

No point in having a blog if you can’t go off topic every so often and do a little bit of advertising for a friend. So the lovely and beautiful Petula Clark, pictured recently after a performance in Canada, and looking about half as old as she should be, has her first ever Christmas album out in the USA. It’s a mixture of traditional Christmas songs, carols and new stuff, some of which she wrote herself.

I’m not much of a Christmas person. I’ve seen how the commercialisation of the festival has changed it from being a warm, bright and cheery time in the middle of the winter, when families and friends got together, exchanged gifts and spent a day together, into a mad frenzy of money spending, gluttony and drunkenness. We now all know far more about how disastrous it will be for the “High Street”, if we don’t all dig deep, or rather put it all on our credit cards, and fill up their tills, than we do about why we are celebrating in the first place. And, although I’m not a Christian, I think that’s a bit sad. I can’t imagine any other religion that would allow itself to be so hijacked.

Working in some of the poorer parts of the city here, I’ve often seen people in real misery, having not yet paid off last Christmas’s excesses, and still taking on more debt to ensure that their kids aren’t left out... and at the same time, I’ve listened to colleagues boast about how much money they have spent on their children, the lucky ones whose parents have a job. So, you’ll not find me raving much about the joys of Christmas. I’ve seen too many of the miseries.

But, back to our Pet. I’ve been a fan ever since I was a little lad, and I think I have every single thing that she has ever recorded in a multitude of languages and formats from 78 rpm records to laser discs.

The album is of course just plain magic, what else would you expect? My favourite tracks are a soulful version of “Silent Night” as sung at the Icelandic Frost Roses Gala a couple of years ago in Reykjavík. A beautiful recording of “Il est ne, le devin enfant”, a fabulous new song written by Petula “Butterfly in the Snow” and an amazing “Away in a Manger”, where she first sings the version that is sung here in the Europe, then the one that is sung in the States, then joins them together, hands across the sea.... and finally both French and English versions of the “Little Drummer Boy”

Well, of course if it’s not your cup of tea then you won’t want it, but if you are looking for some Christmas music, you could do a lot worse than "This is Christmas". Unfortunately it is not released in Scotland, so it has to be bought online. You can find it on http://www.petulaclark.net/ .... where you'll hear a bit of “Butterfly in the Snow” as a wee bonus.

.....and no, she’s not paying me for this. I wish!...:¬)

WE GAVE YOU A LONG ROPE: YOU HANGED YOURSELVES

Moan, moan, whine.

That’s what we got when the Legge letters started landing on the doormats of MPs a couple of weeks ago. They moaned again about not having done anything wrong. (Like we hadn’t heard enough of that!) Then they moaned about having to pay the money back, and then, as if they hadn’t moaned enough, they whined about how unfair it had been because they had been expecting, indeed had been promised, the letters at 2 o’clock and then at 4 ... and you wouldn’t believe it.... the poor wee mites, some of the letters didn’t arrive until after 6. Bless them. What a to do. Fancy having to wait around half the day for a letter!

They moaned that it wasn’t fair that they had to pay back money for having their houses cleaned and their hanging baskets watered, and they moaned that it wasn’t fair because the rule book hadn’t said that they couldn’t. And in a way, they were quite correct.

From what I could see of the rule book it never once said. “You cannot have your house cleaned at the public’s expense. Nor may you have your garden looked after ditto”. I’m guessing that the rules’ authors assumed a modicum of intelligence in the MP class and/or just a smattering of the much vaunted moral compass. On that basis the House of Commons Green Book made clear that expenses could only be claimed if they were “incurred wholly, necessarily and exclusively in the performance of their parliamentary duties”.

Enough said, I think. If you can’t be an MP and carry out your duties without having your garden watered, then you have a choice: don’t be an MP; don’t have a garden; pay for the garden to be watered out of your own pocket, like the rest of the country has to do. That's not so awful, is it?

Now with today’s Kelly Report, another wide range of recommendations which the Prime Minister (when he set up the enquiry) promised would be accepted in full, and another outbreak of moaning and whining. No more mortgages interest; no more spouses and offspring employment; no second homes within London. You can hear the whining from here and the report hasn’t been released yet.

But nothing unfair is being proposed (at least from the leaks, or disclosures so far). Nothing that wouldn’t be considered quite fair in “ordinary” people’s lives. I mean, no one else can buy a house and speculate with tax payers’ money in the way that MPs can (except perhaps peers), and, in no other public service can close relatives work directly with each other. No public employees are paid arbitrary amounts; nor do they work away without a close check on their absenteeism, time keeping, conduct and performance. Why should MPs' staff be any different?

Accusations that the proposed new regulations will make it impossible for poorer people to be MPs are ill-founded. Accommodation will still be provided in London for those who are in need of it. It will now, however, be rented accommodation. MPs will still be able to employ people to work for them, but now they will have to be employed on a regulated basis. Just like everyone else. What’s off putting in that?

What I say is: You get paid three times the average wage for a job which requires no training and no qualification. You start on the top rate. All you have to do is satisfy your constituency party that you’re a good bet for winning. In the bulk of constituencies you are guaranteed a job for life. Now stop whining, stop moaning and get on with your jobs of holding the executive to account. So far you've been useless at it.

IT'S NO WONDER THAT THEY JUST DON'T GET IT

The three pictured are from the left Lord Falconer, Lord (Ha Ha) Foulkes and Lord Martin, the Rt Hon. Baron Martin of Springburn to the likes of you and me.

As a matter of traditional right, and ironically on the day that the expenses scandal that finished his career in the Commons burst back on to the front pages, the disgraced ex-Speaker took his place and swore his oath in the House of Lords. He was sponsored by Lord Falconer and the little fat joke Foulkes, having yet another day off (on full pay) from his day job in our parliament.

So, this is the quality of our aristocracy, albeit the wee pretendy ones.

But just look at the decor in the picture. That is the building these people work in and these are their “Sunday best” working clothes. Is it really any wonder these people are so completely out of touch with the country that goes along outside of the Palace of Westminster.

It sickens me beyond measure that we are paying for all of this nonsense to amuse and reward a few well connected boot fillers, while there are people with achingly empty stomachs living in cardboard boxes. It’s a Britain I want no part of.