Corruption in the House

http://bill.verity-networks.com/ext/recess/recess.php

This is a link to the website, Recess Monkey. This monkey guy is usually a bit of a flake, he's a New Labour wannabe MP who's so loyal to the cult of Blair, he makes your stomach turn.

Even so, he has written a decent piece about a Tory MP who has been taking Americans on Tours on the Palace of Westminster for £800 each. This is the kind of graft that make the public distrust all politicians. The MP, Jonathan Sayeed seems to be uncontactable but according to the press reports, his office assistant is also involved with the scam.

This guy needs to resign immediately. Read the monkey piece and you'll see why.

Gravy train

All MPs except those who represent inner London seats are entitled to an allowance for accommodation in london. Theoretically, an MP could use this for paying rent or hotel bills but most use it to pay off a mortgage for a Central London apartment. I don't know how much this allowance comes to but a reasonable guess would be about £15,000 a year. If 600 MPs use this allowance, that comes to a £9m annual bill - and i reckon I've underestimated the size of that allowance.

Fair enough, MPs need somewhere to live while they are away from home; but when these MPs lose their seats, they don't give the apartment back to the Palace, they keep it or sell it and keep the profit. This is a well-known perk of being an MP and they are resistant to having it scrutinised.

It would be more sensible for the Palace to have a property arm that maintained a stock of apartments for MPs to use while in office and which would be passed back to the House of Commons authorities on their retirement from Parliament. Eventually, all the financing for the apartments would be paid off and the only costs would be for maintenance.

And with the money the Palace saves, they could pay staff more - or even give some back to the taxpayer!

State funding of political parties

So we don't have state funding of political parties in this country? Alright, so there's the £5m or so that goes to opposition parties in Short money but other than that... BOLLOCKS

Loads of MPs abuse their expenses for political purposes. http://dear-john.blogspot.com/ for example. I don't know who he is or who he works for but his MP has him sending out thousands of newsletters to constituents even though unsolicited circulars are prohibited by the Department for Finance and Administration - except for one annual constituency report. Some MPs are constantly sending out unsolicited letters to constituents, which increases their local profile at the expense of the taxpayer. Yet an opposing candidate couldn't afford to do the same - they probably couldn't afford the postage.

But the staff of these MPs would probably get the sack if they stood up to their boss and said no. Funny thing is that these dishonest MPs, spending taxpayers' money to campaign for re-election, are more likely to win their seats again than honest MPs who campaign on a level playing field.

First post

Right - first I have to admit I'm not the defunct parliamentary blogger - I'm a new one. I don't even know who was the old one so I can't even ask if I can pinch his old site. For what its worth, I'm tipping my hat in your direction and hope you don't mind.

I'm writing this in part out of boredom and partly because there seem to be a lot of people out there who see working in politics as a kind of job where you don't have to do much work and you can piss around all the time. Basically, it makes us all look like flakes. I'll post the evidence of this when I get around to it