It’s not so much the money

It’s the justifications for it. The latest is Tam Dalyell:

Mr Dalyell wanted to buy a set of 12 designer shelving units for the House of the Binns, the 200-acre estate in Scotland where his family have lived for almost 400 years.

He had accumulated a considerable library working as Labour MP for Linlithgow since 1962, and was able to make the claim because he designated one of the estate’s rooms his constituency office.

That’s the post tax income of the average working person in hte country. And he demands that much just for book cases? Worse, he demands it 2 months before he retires?

But it’s not even that. Here’s his justification:

Mr Dalyell said yesterday that all his expenses claims had been “absolutely justified”. He said: “I’m absolutely at ease with all of this … The bookcases were needed for all the Hansards I’d collected. I also do a lot of obituaries and wanted them to be in order. And indeed my political books.”

Why should we pay for his collection of Hansards? It’s all available online anyway. Further, so he does a lot of obituaries, does he? For which he gets paid by the newspapers he does them for? Why are we as taxpayers subsidising his private business?

These people just aren’t getting it, are they? I don’t think anyone thinks that MPs, just like anyone else doing a job, shouldn’t get expenses for what they have to spend to do their job. But the important words there are “have” and “job”.

A fancy set of bookcases for your second job, not the one you’re actually being paid to do as an MP, no, they don’t qualify. Why is it so hard for the political classes to understand this?