How much to buy us all off then so that we forget about it?… More than £13k Hazel.

And who reckons it’s actually for real ie will she really pay it in or wait til the cameras have gone then shred it!

Just talking about this at work, waiting for the NOTW or something to reveal that either a) the MP does not have an account with the bank they are waving a cheque about from or b) do not have sufficient funds in said account to cash the cheque

See the MP’s are now calling for a probe in to the pub industry, why, to deflect attention from themselves?

They’ll all write cheques to ‘do the right thing’

…..then claim it back in a couple of months

I took that very much as an admission of guilt of tax avoidance and that she protests too much after seeing it on Sky News this morning. Crass – utterly crass.

I am right in thinking she had ambitions to be the next Nu Labour leader?

I’m finding it very difficult to care about all this.

Hasn’t really lowered my opinion of politicians.

So from now on if i steal money its ok so long as i pay it back if i get caught – great role models these MP.

I see some really minor party getting all the protest votes at the upcomming euro elections. Green would be good, but i bet the BNP get votes.

I know someone who campaigns/canvasses for the green party, and apparently there are LOTS of people planning to vote BNP round here 🙁

Well I’m undecided over who I’m going to vote for, though I lost faith in the three main parties a long time ago.

Maybe I’ll sell my vote to an MP. They can always claim it back as a parliamentary expense….

BNP are definitely going to get a huge landslide, that or UKIP (BNP lite)

I liked how Hazel Blears was alluding to the press attacking our democracy, and it wasn’t the MP’s fault that it was a dirty corrupt system. I wonder if the editors of the major newspapers are worried about being branded as terrorists yet.

Anyone who can write a 13K cheque without it bouncing from a standard account either has too much money or has no idea where best to invest 🙂

They really are so far out of touch that they think it’s about the money 😡

Made slightly more angry now by the gimp of an MP on news 24 just now who seemed to want a medal for giving back his money, and just repeated his spiel over and over again whatever the question was.

Couldn’t bring himself to admit that it was wrong, just kept saying it was ‘within the rules’.

wait til the cameras have gone then shred it

bit like yer man from HBOS with his huge pension, promised ‘to consider it’…. AFAIK its not been mentioned since

and, yes, i also took the bradishing of the chq to be an admission of tax evasion…..
if you or i get caught with ‘our fingers in the till’ the management (and / or tax man) would be all over us and we’d rightly be out on our ear……. 👿

So tax avoidance is a crime right ? Can none of these dodgers get done for it ?

No. There is a poor mesh between the parliamentary allowances system of designating a second home and the tax system of designating a main residence. There is no fraud here as far as I can see, it’s just rather gamey.

tax avoidance is perfectly legal. tax evasion is a crime.

Considering how long established the ‘expenses rules’ are I find it amazing that this is such hot news.

To quote David Mitchell ‘I don’t take a vested interest in the Politics of my country for 30 or 40 years and look what happens?’

Now I accept that the rules are very lax and require / need to be overhauled but it’s not as if it’s only the current crop of MP’s that have been claiming. The fact that it’s Public money is irrelevant. After all, we all make use advantages that our employment offers us to a certain extent.

I find the grovelling posturing and automatic apologies more offensive and insincere to be honest.

Churchill lived the life of extreme luxury during the Second World War and the public supported him fully.

That was becaues we won the war, if we had not he would have been blamed.

So to invoke Goodwin’s law, is the MP expenses saga all Hitler’s fault?

My comments were more to highlight the disproportional blame being lobbied at current MP’s. They are part of an existing system, that does require major changes, but they didn’t establish it.

If only the same amount of energy and resources were put into making things better.

I agree about all the fuss and the false apologies. I do think blaming the system is a bit rich though, they may have followed the rules, but they were exploiting them to the fullest extent possible.

What I totally fail to understand is how, when so many things are self evidently crap, that nobody seems to care or have the will to do anything about it. The MP’s expenses situation has been shite for a long time, and we all knew that.

considering how long established the ‘expenses rules’ are I find it amazing that this is such hot news.

But how far they’d been allowed to bend / game / commit fraud using the rules wasn’t public knowledge due to them fighting as hard as possible to keep all expenses secret.

The MP’s expenses situation has been shite for a long time, and we all knew that.

No we didn’t. We didn’t have any idea how much these MPs were fiddling their expenses. People might have thought some fiddling was going on, but for it to be so widespread, and to involve quite such devious trickery, is pretty surprising.

In the US, they just publish all expenses claims as a matter of fact. People know that when they expense stuff, so they don’t take the piss.

After all, we all make use advantages that our employment offers us to a certain extent.

If we did it to the extent MPs have, the moment HMRC took a look at our companies accounts, we’d get a stonking big tax bill for unreasonable expenses, and/or put in jail for tax fraud.

Joe

As I said on another thread – a very similar scandal came to light in the holyrood parliament – it was sorted within weeks. Only rent or moderate hotel bills allowed and all expenses no matter how small published on a website. End of fiddles.

Daily mash summed it up very well as usual,

Labour MP’s, expenses for stuff their parents couldnt afford (flat TV’s, 3 pice suite etc etc)

Tory MP’s, moat cleaning, hellipad, drawbridge wax