The Financial Times on expenses

What has been truly shocking about the MPs’ expenses row has been the ‘littleness’ of it all. This is the scandal at the heart of British politics,

Eh?

The problem is that they’re not stealing enough?

Eeek!

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?

Good grief!

I thought we’d got to the point where I was immune to further revelations. I just couldn’t imagine that it would get any worse. I was wrong:

It can also be disclosed that, in November 2007, Mr Morley “flipped” his designated second home from the Scunthorpe house to his London property - and the dubious mortgage claims were never uncovered.

Mr Morley, a former government whip and privy councillor, was renting out the London property, which was designated as his “main residence”, to another Labour MP.

Ian Cawsey, a Labour Party vice-chairman, who was renting the house, said last night he was unaware that the property was also Mr Morley’s main residence. It is unclear where Mr Morley was actually living in London.

For four months after Mr Morley “flipped” his homes, the former minister claimed full mortgage interest on the London house and Mr Cawsey, who had designated the house as his second home, continued to claim £1,000 a month for the same property in rent. The rent money was paid to Mr Morley.

Incredible, isn’t it? Two claims on the same property? We pay the mortgage for him and then we also pay the rent that he pockets?

Isn’t it about time some people started resigning?

Where the money goes

It isn’t of course, just Brussels which wastes our hard earned tax money.

Taxpayers stand to lose £500million in a £1billion bail-out of the Olympic Village project after talks to secure private finance failed.

The athletes’ village for the 2012 Games has had to be nationalised after private investment dried up in the credit crunch.

Westminster does well enough at pouring it down the drain as well.

Time for a change really, isn’t it?

LDV subsidised

I have to admit to laughing like a drain over this:

The government on Tuesday night agreed a £5m bail-out of LDV, the struggling Midlands vanmaker, in a contentious move that marks a symbolic shift in Labour’s industrial policy for responding to the recession.

It doesn’t mark a symbolic shift in anything at all. Labour has always thrown the taxpayers’ money around just before an election. Especially to the car industry in the Midlands of course. Remember Rover?

But the real laugh comes here:

Peter Mandelson, the business secretary, has not been directly involved in the decisions on LDV because of political controversy surrounding his links to Mr Deripaska.

Yeah, right. Mr. Deripaska has billions and billions: but it’s the UK taxpayer who has to bail out the mate of the Business Secretary.

Of course, no one in this government has ever mislead us on anything at all. Nope, never. So we take them at their word, don’t we?

How the police work….or don´t work perhaps

So, erm, a DJ says that a dormouse might have been woken from hibernation.

At this point the police spring into action:

Some viewers believed him and rang police. When an officer went to investigate at the Secret World Wildlife Rescue Centre in Somerset, staff were horrified……..A spokesman for Avon and Somerset Police confirmed that a complaint was made over the dormouse and that an officer was sent out to investigate.

It´s a pity you don´t get that sort of visit when you report a burglary really, isn´t it?

Where the money goes

It´s one thing to argue, as we do, that there´s too much government. And that it´s too expensive. But what we´d really like to know is why is it so eyewateringly costly? What do they actually do with the money in government?

Shred it and pour it down the drains?

The Department for International Development spent £526,990 on a two-day event discussing the impact of the global economic downturn on the developing world.

The sum was £100,000 more than the total amount DFID gave to Namibia between 2007 and last year and could have bought more than 100,000 anti-malaria bed nets.

Err, yes, they do appear to simply shred it.

Anyone who says there´s no fat to cut from government simply hasn´t been paying attention.

The Tower of Babel

From the Parliament’s daily press roundup.

Language bill (Daily Mirror, p. 6 - Belfast edition):  “Last year, the taxpayer was hit with a bill of more than £360,000 to fund Irish speaking in the European Parliament - even though it was only spoken for 30 minutes there in 2008.”

Not really much one can say about that, is there?

How to lie by telling the truth

Caroline Flint in Parliament:

Mr. Francois: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what EU job centres are based in non-EU states; what the expected total projected costs of these offices is for 2009; and whether there are any plans to open more such offices. [258914]

Caroline Flint: There are no EU job centres in non-EU states, and there are no plans to open any such offices.

And she’s quite right but extraordinarily misleading. For:

CIGEM is not an EU Job Centre but a Migration Information and Management Centre, funded through resources under the ninth European Development Fund.

There are no EU job centres, they’re called Migration Information and Management Centres.

H/T Dizzy.