THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS...

Told you so!

Couldn't happen to a nicer condom, I mean erm prime minister

And so it goes on

Ooops...probably shouldn't be driving with this condom on my head.

It wasn't exactly what he said.
He clearly said that they wouldn't act against Scotland
 until Scotland had rejected independence,
but the pic was too good to reject

He must have a hell of a  house

Don't get excited. He didn't choke laughing... Still...

So what do you say Mrs Nay, I mean May

And they already renationalised their grid in Hamburg

They must think we are real suckers, while we think that they are....
erm grasping MPs

Tut tut. One rule for the ruled and one rule for the rulers

Not that interested in what celebrities say,
 but Annie's always been political

How many times do we have to tell them?

Probably would have been better to deep fry them

Aye Justin, talking of miracles

But not if you are the head of the Bank of England,
or running the Tory party or the new head of RBS...

LOL

No stitch ups there then

We miss nothing!!

Told you...

Thousands and thousands of people
 will die because of greed

MPs LIKELY TO RECEIVE 12%, (£10,000) A YEAR PAY RISE

I know Vince is a boring old windbag, but at least knowing the cameras were likely to catch you, specially as you are dressed like warning flares and we couldnt miss you, you'd think you could have stopped playing on the phones for the duration. Like, I mean, you ARE at work!

I'd like to be the first to congratulate the MPs on their massive pay increase, expected to be announced in the near future.

It must be nice for them to be able to sit there in the House of Commons (knowing that in a few years it will be renovated at the cost of something like £2 billion), playing on their phones (check out the two women sitting behind Vince, dressed as if they were off to a garden party (left), and to Tescos (right), paying not a blind bit of attention to what is going on in the House (ie their job, for which they get paid) and knowing that to hell with everyone else who works in the public sector, they are going to get a 12% increase.

Now, for the first time this is NOT at their behest. The right to set their own salaries and pension was taken away from them after they were found to have among their number a very large pack of cheating, thieving, on the make bastards. 

But the Independent Parliamentary Standards Committee which got he job of looking after these matters, appears to think that if they are not awarded this money their will simply steal it. The Ipsa chairman Sir Ian Kennedy insisted there was “never a good time” to deal with the issue and warned that avoiding an increase could create another expenses-style crisis as politicians sought to top up their salaries. He seems to think that they are worth it. This will be a mystery to those of us who are watching the country disappear further and further down the drain. 

And yes, I've read that they will lose a few perks and have some of their fabulous pension rights removed, but there are many other people in the UK who have lost all kinds of perks since the government and the banks brought the country to its knees 5 years ago. How many of them were compensated with a £10,000 a year pay increase?

So, as I say, congratulations. 

Loadsamoney Spiv

But just a wee word of caution. Remember you important people need to work with us ordinary people.  You may find that your pay rises of more than many people earn, and twice what you pay pensioners, three times what you pay the unemployed and the sick, don't go down terribly well with us plebs.

If I were an MP, I'd be looking at listing on my website and in my local paper, the charities that will benefit from this unexpected, and completely undeserved windfall.

I'll be happy to list any here too, if any MP wants to get in touch.

THE TWO FACES OF MARGARET MORAN

Congratulations to Mrs Moran. 

She's been found guilty of stealing £53,000 from us, but bless her, she's too sick to be able to appear in court, and so she's not to be punished, at least for now and possibly not ever. 

I make no comment about her mental state: she's always appeared to me to be slightly unhinged, but I'd like to point out that the last time she was so ill, so depressed, so unable to get off her backside and do her job as an MP (despite still being paid for it), she managed to  turn up, dressed to the nines, and brimming with confidence, to apply for a lobbying job...(or so she though, because it was actually a sting by "Despatches", and she made a fool of herself, yet again in front of the British public).


Why is it that some criminals can plead that they are depressed simply because they have been caught, and that is enough to have them excused from trial, and yet no matter how depressed others are it's down to the Sheriff court and off to the pokey with them? 

It's amazing what scraping the make up off, letting you hair go grey and putting on a shabby old coat and hat can do to add 40 years to your age and make you look like you've given up.

     

Edit: Just for Niko:

IMAGINE NOT HAVING TO SUPPORT THIS ANY MORE

Once upon 2 or 3 years ago our London politicians were discovered to have been stealing money from us on a massive scale. And so it came to pass that the Daily Telegraph made it its business to make the theft public.

And, because there was an election looming, all the party leaders swore that this disgusting and criminal behaviour (although they too had managed to fiddle ...as an oversight, of course) would be stopped. 

(They even threw a few hapless idiots, that no one much liked, to the wolves and allowed the courts to sentence them to a deal less time than, in 2010, would be meted out to people who stole a bottle of water, during the time of the English riots, in a typical British "one rule for them, another for us" way.)

But, back to the tale. The authorities set up a new system of expenses and MPs were treated a tiny little bit more like "ordinary people".

But they didn't like it. Not one bit. They discovered that living like an "ordinary person"  in Britain  was pretty intolerable (second class rail fares, providing receipts, not being able to bully the staff, having to wait!) and so almost immediately after the election they began unpicking their "ordinariness".

One of the schemes they came up with was to use their taxpayer funded  homes to rent to other MPs, and to rent other properties, for which they could charge expenses. One way to make a jolly little killing. The Daily Telegraph has once more made it their business to let us know about this.

Apparently it is quite legal. And easy to do if you have the morals of an alley cat.

Step forward Liam Fox. (I hasten to add that, at the time of writing Mr Fox is only one of 27 MPs who have been implicated in this practice, but one that it is particularly satisfying to mention.)

These words come from a different time, but they are surprisingly relevant to today's situation.

"Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government.....

....In the name of God, go! "

Well, of course they won't go. They have the Speaker on their side (just like the last lot did). They have more front than Deauville. They'll stay.

But Scotland could go....

JUST A WEE TUBE ON YOUTUBE

Mr Davidson continues to be an embarrassment to the Labour Party and to Scotland. Fortunately this piece was only shown on Newsnight Scotland, so at least no one else will be smirking up their sleeves at idiot Scots.

Wings Over Scotland has an excellent piece on the interview with which I won't  try to compete. 

It is, however, fair to say that Davidson in his charmless way managed to insult one of BBC Scotland's more reasonable and decent interviewers, one of a number who is not biased in any direction.

He also suggested that advice lawyers give on constitutional matters is determined by how much you pay them... without considering that, if that were true, it might throw some doubt upon the advice received by what he referred to as "his side".

He appeared to have the misguided idea that the Scottish people of 15 years ago had voted in a referendum on the matter of constitutional affairs as dictated by The Scotland Act, when the Scotland Act followed that referendum by 1 year. Neither did it seem to register as in any way important that the Scottish people had since elected, in massive numbers, a government which had, in its manifesto, made it clear that it would bring forward legislation on a referendum on independence. That seems to me to be a lot more up to date, than any confused memory of Davidson's from 14 or 15 years ago.

Davidson, of course, appears to have a deep hatred of anything to do with the SNP. Maybe this because he would be out of a job in an independent Scotland, and certainly deprived of taking maximum advantage of the more generous expenses that he has enjoyed as a member of the London parliament.

He called the SNP "neo-fascists", a remark which was criticised by even the Labour Party, and was obliged to apologise to Eilidh Whiteford for appearing to suggest that he would give her a "doing". 

All of this was topped off by his schoolboy insistence in calling "Newsnight", "NewsNat". (Once might have been vaguely amusing, even if inappropriate for someone of his supposed standing, but repeatedly throughout the interview, was just cheap.) If he is so concerned about bias, he, as chairman of a Commons committee, should write to the Chris Patten and ask him to investigate. I suspect, however, that he won't.

WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT?

POOR OLD Margaret Moran is suffering from depression, so badly that she is not fit to plead in her trial for embezzlement or, if you prefer it, THEFT of around £80,000 of our money.


She did not attend the court case to determine her fitness to plead, but evidence was heard that she was suffering from a depressive illness and associated anxiety of moderate severity. A forensic psychologist gave evidence that when she was at home in Southampton (that would be the home of her boyfriend, for which we paid out £20,000 to treat the dry rot...so at least she doesn't have to worry about the floor giving way), when, for example, she was cooking or watching television, she might seem to be only mildly depressed, (as indeed probably around 3/4 of the population is). However, when the case has to be discussed, she becomes severely depressed.

Awwww, what a bloody shame. She shouldn't have been a thief then, should she?


And it gets better. She feels that she has been abandoned by the Labour Party. I mean, what on Earth did she expect? Quietly in the background, I'm sure that the Labour Party encouraged the use of expenses to make up salaries to what they thought they deserved, but she surely didn't expect that the leadership would support her when she was caught... or maybe she is really that stupid.


Of course she is depressed. She used to have a job which paid £65,000 a year plus incredibly generous expenses (the ones she abused), and for which she appeared to have to do very little work (she didn't do much in the way of constituency duties). She was known as 'The Hon Lady', she travelled first class, she had privilege and position. Now she's just a lag awaiting trial. She's fallen off a pedestal and landed flat on her lardy backside. 


If I were in her position, I would be so ashamed I'd never go out at all. I'd be spending my time in bed. In fact I'd probably be saving up my pills so that I could end it all. 


What I cannot understand is why she gets away with not being able to plead because she feels ashamed. Would this work for someone caught stealing a similar amount from social security? Any ideas?

QUIET REINSTATEMENT OF RESETTLEMENT PAYMENTS FOR MPS

MPs’  “Resettlement payments” were abolished following the expenses scandal, in an effort to placatetaxpayers, angry at those who had been steeling from the public purse.

However, it didn’t take them long to get fingers back into the till and their snouts back into the trough.

The funds have been quietly reintroduced on what is described as an “interim” basis. MPs who are rejected by the public will be able to claim the allowances in the event of a snap election before 2015. A permanent policy on resettlement payments will be introduced next year.

The system entitles politicians to up to six months’ salary to help them “adjust to life” (it’s a foreign land outside the Commons), because poor souls, they, unlike ordinary people, have to be feather bedded when they lose their well-paid jobs.

After the 2010 general election some MPs were entitled to up to 100% of their salary when they were rejected by the voters.

Nick Clegg was a strong critic of the payments at that time. He said that there was “no reason” why an MP who was sacked or decided to stand down should be “rewarded with a big, tax-free, lump sum payment” however, it appears that being in government has altered his view.

Redaction!

Under the system brought in by Osborne, and agreed by Cameron, Clegg and Alexander, MPs will be able to claim a month’s wages for every year they have been in parliament with the maximum being 6 months (about £33,000).

The interim scheme will apply only if there is an election before 2015. The MPs will still be entitled to claim for accommodation costs for up to 2 months, as well as any security and disability assistance they were claiming before they left. They will also be entitled to an increased allowance for winding up offices: £56,250 for MPs in the London area and £53,150 for those elsewhere. (An unfair situation in these days where other areas of the UK have exceptionally high costs.)

They don’t half think a lot of themselves, do they?

When will they get it into their thick heads that they are NOT RULERS, just functionaries working for us, because there isn’t room for us all in the London assembly... and in any case we have better things to do with our time?

MPs GETTING ABOVE THEMSELVES AGAIN WITH FIRST CLASS TRAVEL

Click to enlarge

I understood that, following the scandal of MPs thieving from the public by putting virtually their entire expenditure on expenses, various things were to change.


One of these was that they were supposed to travel cattle class like the rest of us on what passes in the UK for a train network, instead of luxuriating in first class at the most expensive fares in the world.


Well, that is what was agreed, but of course, in practice (if you believe the Daily Mail) the thieving tossers have been on the fiddle again.


According to figures released by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), MPs claimed for a total of 1334 first class train journeys at a cost of £136,800 in June and July 2011. This is a staggering increase of 155% over the same period in 2010.


It seems that as the memory of the expenses scandal uncovered by the Daily Telegraph recedes from memory, these self important public servants are back to enjoying the comforts that most of the rest of us are denied.


But it doesn't stop at first class rail travel. Oh no. While the public squeeze in to third class seats in aircraft, our representatives in parliament have been winging it hither and thither in business class. 115 flights were made in June and July last year, at a cost of £35,722 (including one to Athens costing £844.20!!!


Upper class air and train fares, say the Mail, are on target to reach £1 million this year.

They are supposed to go second class, or tourist class, like the people they have the great honour to represent, and of whom they are employees!


They were also supposed to take buses instead of taxis, except in exceptional circumstances. Of course, you'll have guessed that these exceptional circumstances have occurred more and more often. Indeed in June and July last year, they doubled from the previous year, to over £13,000 worth.


Message to MPs. Don't push us too far. We're getting poorer and poorer; you're taking more and more...and we're getting angrier and angrier.

SO, WHO, OR WHAT, IS LEFT TO TRUST?

I was reflecting the other day, in conversation with my mother, that there is virtually no one left to trust.


We all know how MPs systematically cheated us out of billions over the last 30 years since Thatcher put a brake on the public perception of their greed, but let the wheels slide over the surreptitious increase in alternative income. And by now we know too that the ridiculous anachronism along the corridor did exactly the same thing. (Wouldn't this have been an ideal opportunity to rid ourselves of this bloated chamber forever)? 


We are aware that despite all the theft, only a few dismal examples at the bottom of the food chain in both houses have been charged, found guilty and spent a matter of weeks, rather than months behind bars, released early, doubtless to write books about their misfortune.


It's become plain too, that members of the royal family, most notably Andrew, have been enjoying the jet set life at our expense, and sometimes at the expense of rich dictators' families, while his daughters fall out of night clubs at 4 in the morning followed by body guards paid for by us.


The tabloid press has made a habit of providing the scandal hungry public with  salacious titbits about their favourite "celebrities" by hacking their phones... or at least the phones of the ones who didn't rush to disclose every detail of dirty doings (read Jordan and Pete). And the Met, England's finest, are complicit in this, having accepted hospitality, and employment from the press, then giving scant attentions to charges against them. (It's only fair to say that the Met aren't the only corrupt police force in the news.)


Banks, the finance industry and the City (the markets) privatised their profits and socialised their losses. Despite the billions we pumped into them, the government is having to guarantee loans to small business, and top up what they loan to first time buyers leaving us to wonder why we continue to have banks, or why we didn't let them fail. They'll all go to Mumbai .... awwww.


The story of HSBC'S selling insurance to vulnerable OAPs make my flesh creep, and despite the names of the executives responsible and their methods being known, no one has been arrested. (I heard this on the morning news programme, but it seems to have disappeared from the BBC site, so there is no link.)

Now today, despite denying it yesterday, the UK government has conceded that the lobbiests have direct access at the highest level to them and can get them to intercede and change policy, overnight in some cases (obviously only when it is in the bests interests of the country!!!). (Excuse me, must run, my hat just blew off.)


So far who is left to trust is the Scottish government.  Don't let us down Alex. If you do you will never be forgiven.

AT LEAST THE LORDS CAN'T STEAL REDUNDANCY MONEY FROM US: THEY'VE GOT THE JOB FOR LIFE!

It’s taken nearly a year for the authorities to accede to the Freedom of Information request, but finally we have the figures to show that every single MP chose to accept their Golden Goodbyes, worth up to £65,000. Even those who had been guilty of theft took the money and ran.

Even the chiselling little bitch like Moran, who you will remember stole tens of thousands of pounds from us getting her boyfriend’s house (not anywhere near either London, or her constituency), done up, got half of what she would otherwise have been due, despite being the subject of a police inquiry.

Moran went into hiding after the affair, claiming that she was suffering from nervous exhaustion. Claiming to be sick, and being paid full wages in good faith, the silly cow got herself caught on camera touting for another job in PR because she had good contacts within the Labour party.

Other greedy fat cats, who had absolutely no need whatsoever of a payout to help them resettle to life again, but none the less got their grasping greedy trotters on our money yet again included: Douglas Hogg, Conservative, who is an Earl and who claimed for cleaning the moat on his castle; Conman Conway, who was thrown out of the Tories after overpaying his sons on his taxpayer-funded allowances to work as a parliamentary researcher, when in fact he had done zip all; Stephen Byers, Geoff Buffon Hoon and Patricia Hewitt, who were nabbed in the same cash for access scandal that Moran the moron was caught out in, all got the top whack as did Des Browne (imagine that... after being as useless as he was) and John Reid.

Then there was Andrew MacKay, who fiddled by registering his MP wife’s second home as his main address, thereby having 2 second homes in the family, and the unlovely David Heathcoat-Amory, who claimed for horse manure on his expenses. I wonder he would want to buy that stuff given the fact he spouts it every time he opens his mouth. All of the above claimed £65,000 on top of the money they are all given (£40,000) to wind up their offices and pay off their staff.

Lib Dem Julia Goldsworthy, who lost her seat at the tender age of 31 after five years after she claimed for a £1,200 rocking chair (she must think very highly of her posterior) and who went straight to work as advisor to Danny Alexander at an amazing £74,000-a-year, claimed her share of resettlement money. Greedy bitch.

The money to close down offices (pay rent till end of lease, give staff a small package, pay electricity, gas, etc) is not unreasonable. Money handed to MPs who wanted to go on but were flung out by their constituents, is perhaps permissible, although anyone else wouldn’t get anything like that kind of pay out. However, those who were standing down voluntarily, some over 70, should have got not a penny. Odious Nick Winterton (leaving because he’d be obliged to travel second class with plebs on trains if he stayed) and his unlovely wife, Anne (renowned for her racist jokes about dead Chinese cockle pickers) would have picked up about £130,000 despite the fact that they are in their dotage and planned to go anyway. (Redundancy payments are not normally made to people over the age of 64.)

It’s just another big fat slap in the face for us “ordinary people”. We hardly notice it; we’re used to being treated like David Heathcoat Amery’s estate...covered in manure...all 550 sacks of it.

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...

******

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.

EXPENSE CLAIMS REAR THEIR UGLY HEADS AGAIN

They really make you laugh do MPs, don't they?

Conservative Roger Gale has said that Ian Kennedy, chairman of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) should consider resigning. He said that the organization is not working and those responsible have got to be replaced.

The Liberal Democrat Conservative Bob Russell has called the organization the worst he has dealt with and described it as ‘not fit for purpose’ (an expression a bit close to home in the mouth of a Libdem, actually in the mouth of an MP).

Amazing! IPSA was put in place only a year ago, by MPs, and it’s not fit for purpose? Already? Well I never.

But the funniest comment came from David Winnick, a member of the equally amusing Labour Party who said: ''The patience of MPs has reached such a state that inevitably there will be changes.'' Goodness, we simply can’t have the patience of MPs being stretched. Whatever next? We’ll be asking them to turn up for work and do what we pay them to do instead of writing books and going on tours, sitting on company boards, practising law, appearing on tv quiz and reality shows, etc.

Ian Kennedy made it absolutely clear he was going nowhere. With the kind of common sense that you rarely hear from people in public life he pointed out that some MPs were finding it difficult to adjust to independent regulation of their expenses claims (having been used to getting whatever they asked for regardless of what they were due).

He said that IPSA was doing the job it was set up to do and there was no way that he would consider fundamental changes to the system of expenses claims that is now in place. He added that the idea of resigning had not occurred to him.

Nor should it.

IPSA may not be running as smoothly as everyone would want, but that’s the way things are when they are set up initially. Every one of us in this badly organized country has to put up with poorly administered, underfunded facilities, waiting in queues, being overlooked, having mistakes made in payments, lack of information, misinformation. Dealing with anyone or anything in “authority” is likely to cause heart attacks and nervous breakdowns.

MPs appear to think that they should be exempt from the hell that they have wished on the rest of us.

Well, does anyone think that they should be?

The prime minister seems to have a weird idea about what the word “independent” means. He promised his backbenchers that if the organization had not made fundamental changes by April something would be done. By whom, Dave? You? How independent would that be, seeing that you’re an MP yourself.

Given what Ian Kennedy has said, it looks like there will be a showdown... and of course the prime minister will win in the short term because he is the prime minister. But in the long term it’s just another nail in these people’s coffins.

When we complain about something set up by parliament being unfit for purpose, nothing happens; when they complain that they can’t claim travel expenses for their children, Cameron changes the rules... Tut tut, bad move. Whatever happened to us all being in it together?

Ian Kennedy reminded us today that it is the public who pay these expenses. Cameron would do well to remember that he can’t hope to get away with using our money to bribe his backbenchers!