baldysblog.co.uk

Whilst in any organisation there are those that will fiddle the system in one way or another, the reality is that the public out cry and high moral indignation about all of this is massively overblown and may well have less to do with the expenses issue and more to do with the economic one.

In today’s Times is an excellent article by Matthew Parris, written from Beirut in which he seeks to put the whole thing into some perspective, the “indignant” feedbacks are hilarious Torrid of Tunbridge Wells in full flow, worth a look if all rather pathetic.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article6296826.ece

Its Just Payback Time…

After 12 years of the most pompous nannying Government so beautifully typified by the arrogant Harriet Harmon and the every, chippy and smug Hazel Blears, forever telling us what to do and what was good for us complete with ill thought through legislation to force the issue upon us.

A Government led by an incompetent former Chancellor who has become an even worse Prime Minister who single handedly has driven our economy into the ground due to his profligacy with the Public Purse, he is now known as “Crash Gordon”. Against this background catching them with their hands in the till and an excuse of “It was the system wot was rotten…” is delicious and far too good an opportunity to pass up – payback time.

Solutions

A Leader in today’s Independent states that only a General Election can satisfy the anger that the public feel however, an immediate one would help no one, tempers need to cool and wiser heads design appropriate and more open solutions. That Speaker Martin must stand down immediately and be replaced with someone of stature and gravitas is certainly correct because without being “snobbish” which is the usual defence offered, the man has clearly failed in the job and Parliament needs some dignity returned to it.

On the MPs pay etc, I would not suggest any quick fixes on this, which will only unravel later. Whatever the amount of money required and 64k is not adequate to run two homes and one would have thought that most MPs should be worth a basic salary equivalent to a GP of around £100k. We should abolish all expenses except travel to and from their constituencies and pay MPs a gross amount which may well be £150k.

On this income they will have justify deductible expenses (the cost and expenses of earning the income), to the Inland Revenue rather than a Parliamentary Office the same as the rest of us. Who knows, living in this real world might lead to better laws on personal taxation when they realise the hoops we all have to jump through because of their inability to draft fair and sensible legislation – one lives in hope.

The European and Local Elections

There have been expressed fears that all this hullabaloo which has hit the three main parties negatively, could lead to voters deliberately supporting the fringe parties, who knows but they are too close for anybody to do much about that either way.

The European Elections fortunately do not matter that much, even the EU is only projecting a 25 percent turnout Europe wide so having a few extra BNP and UKIP clowns as MEPs is not important, they will just fiddle themselves into financial trouble even if they bother to turn up. If they do turn up they will find that their job has little value to the UK, our MEPs are either overruled or ignored by the socialist Mafia that run the place. In fact it might be more fun if we all elected straw dummies to send to Strasbourg.

A General Election

We do need a General Election this year because Labour having decided to do nothing serious to help the British economy recover in their recent Budget, need to make way for someone who will take the job on like Cameron and the Tories.

However the year marches on and already we are halfway through May, the earliest we could have an election will be September because unless a National Emergency which this isn’t, Summer Holidays and so on are always avoided because of the potential impact on turnout as are the shorter days of November. So mid September to mid October is the window which is normally the “Conference Season”.

Brown hasn’t handled this expenses thing well at all, if Labour get a trouncing in the June elections, will the Parliamentary Labour Party kick him out finally and replace him ? He won’t resign by himself and unless faced with a no confidence vote, wont go for an early election, he being a Star Trek fan would Klingon to the last minute.