So not only are they content with taxing us to the hilt, now they’ve decided that we should pay for everything they need to buy, including all their food!
Read this in the Telegraph, and we can see
In response to this newspaper’s disclosures about the routine abuse by MPs of their second home allowance, the House of Commons authorities last night asked the police to investigate – not the wrong-doing of Members of Parliament, but how the information exposing it was leaked. If evidence were needed that parliament simply fails to understand the deep anger felt in the country about the tawdry goings on at the Palace of Westminster, then this, surely, is it.
Now on to some of the claims themselves
Barbara Follett, the Minister for Tourism, claimed more than £25,000 in expenses for security patrols at her central London home, because she said she did not feel safe there. Not only is Mrs Follett married to a multi-millionaire author and, therefore, not short of money, but nobody forced her to live in a townhouse in Soho.
Next
Phil Hope, the minister in charge of community care. He claimed more than £37,000 in just four years to re-equip a flat that was arguably too small to contain all the items purchased. He also charged the taxpayer £120 for a barbecue – even though Commons rules say that MPs can only claim for the cost of maintaining a garden.
Next
Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee, who lives in a £1.15 million house 12 miles from Parliament, but also claims for a second home in Westminster. Mr Vaz moved his designated second home to a property in his Leicester constituency for one year only, claiming £20,000 during that time, before once again making his Westminster flat his second home. Will he resign?
Next
Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister, trying to stop Gurkhas settling in the UK. He has claimed for nappies and women’s clothes, even though the rules state clearly that personal items such as toiletries will not be reimbursed, nor items bought for anyone else
I’m sure that members of all parties will be exposed as milking the system, but just because technically the rules have not been broken does not make the system morally acceptable.
Quite simply, anyone who has de-frauded the public, must resign with immediate effect, it’s the only way the reputation of politicians in the UK can be saved.
If you tried to do what our MPs have done in any other career, you’d be sacked, quite rightly and probably arrested for fraud. Do you think that’ll happen here? I seriously doubt it, after all our MPs make the laws!
