I see some unfortunate woman is being prosecuted with the full force of the law (maximum possible sentence 5 years) for being a bit creative with the truth about where she was living, in order to secure a decent education for her child.

Whereas MPs who get found out doing the same thing to screw huge amounts of money out of the taxpayer get another year of salary, a “resettlement” payment of 40K plus, and a massive pension.

They don’t get it, do they?

I think you’re ‘being a bit creative with the truth’ eldridge, the maximum penalty for false representation is one year in jail or a £5,000 fine Still, being a bit creative with the truth isn’t a crime …….. is it ?

But I get your point. Although we don’t know for sure yet that no MP will be prosecuted, and the unfortunate lady is very unlikely to receive a prison sentence.

good evening Che*…
🙂

Im glad Ive been on holiday through all this expenses lark…

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* just for those that missed GG’s thing…”Ernesto Guevara de la Serna Lynch”

Hello Stoner, I was getting worried …… thought, I’m going to have to email the bugger and find out if he’s still alive 8)

Based my comment on a BBC report – check it out

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8073532.stm

Based my comment on a BBC report – check it out

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8043561.stm

live, kicking, and recently repatriated.

Off to bed. See you anon.

(and thanks for this 🙂 )

You can’t trust the BBC not to be ‘a bit creative with the truth’ eh eldridge ?

Based my comment on a BBC report – check it out

Since my quote has a more recent date than yours, mine is more likely to be accurate because of the likelihood that your quote is from a report that was corrected after inaccuracies were detected.

Despite your cynicism, the BBC does usually try to adhere to journalistic ethics.

Do you have a grown-up view on this issue, are are you just bleating from under the bridge?

and thanks for this

What ? Me saying Stoner talks about the ‘cyclical nature of the markets’ ?

Well it might surprise you, but I hang to every word you utter mate ….. they’re like little pearls of wisdom to me, they are. So yeah, I can quote you word for word long after you’ve left this forum and are enjoying a holiday in some far flung country where the ‘affluent middle-classes’** like to rest their weary souls.

** ‘affluent middle-classes’ is another direct quote from Stoner btw ….. one which he uttered a good couple of years ago.

Since my quote has a more recent date than yours, mine is more likely to be accurate

You win then. My quote is wrong.

“Do you have a grown-up view on this issue “

Not really. I thought this was the internet – I didn’t realise that we were deciding this woman’s fate.

I think whether or not MPs are dishonest has ****-all to do with anything else, personally. I hate the way we now seem to be incapable of responding to any sentence or punishment without pointing the finger at someone else and saying “They got away with it, it’s not fair” It just seems like another step away from taking personal responsibility.

She’s not “unfortunate”, she’s basically tried to steal a school place from a local kid and she’s been caught. The odds of her being jailed are basically zero, and just as well.

I’m not sure what would be a suitable punishment but yes, it’s fraud. And a pretty unpleasant one too IMO.

She’s not “unfortunate”

I beg to differ, I think she is indeed unfortunate. She’s got caught and now she’s getting hauled before the courts. Doesn’t sound very lucky to me.

Her crime in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t appear to be particularity hideous (the address wasn’t even completely made up one – the family lived there, it’s just that the child didn’t) so I have little doubt that if found guilty, the punishment won’t be a severe one. I don’t think that there’s any chance at all that she will go to prison.
Well – that’s my rather childish view on this issue.

She’s unfortunate in the same way shoplifters who get caught are unfortunate. I eagerly await you sympathising with unfortunate MPs who get caught with their hands in the till.

I eagerly await you sympathising with unfortunate MPs

Actually the MPs which are fighting off the lynch mobs who are trying to hang them from the nearest tree already have my sympathy – as I’ve suggested on another thread.

Vile and hideous as the crime of topping up your crap wages after being told, “Here’s a pot of money, now fill yer pockets” might be, I am strangely relaxed and unbothered by it all.

I’m far more concerned by the fact that they totally screwed up the country with their poxy neo-liberal bound-to-fail policies.

Mr ernie_lynch should get out from under his bridge into the daylight and find out just what crap wages are, if he genuinely thinks MP’s get crap money. I’m a working-class bloke who gets a fraction of what some middle-class, university educated metro-centric Labour MP ‘earns’, and then he/she waltzes off with a fat pension paid for out of MY taxes. Scumbags. I don’t get a quarter of what those shysters pocket. D*ckhead.

Countzero – I’m middle class and university educated and also earn a fraction of what MPs do (would have jumped on ernie’s comment if you hadn’t beaten me to it). I’m quite sure plenty of working class folk who didn’t go to Uni also earn far more than me.

Eldridge – Would you be so sympathetic if the unfortunate lady in question had cheated your child out of a place at that school?

if he genuinely thinks MP’s get crap money.

Yes I do genuinely think MPs get crap money – what’s being under a bridge got to do with it ?

And what’s you being working-class got to do with it too ? Are you saying that all working-class people should be opposed to MPs having a wage increase, but all middle-class people should support a wage increase for MPs. Sounds like you might be living under a bridge mate.

An MP’s job cannot be described as ‘working-class’ because it isn’t. It’s not manual work, it’s intellectual work in the same respect as a professional job is.

If you took all the professional qualifications of all MPs and averaged it out, and then compared it with the average wage for that level of qualification, I think that you will find that the averge wage for that level of qualification, is considerably more that £64k. In fact, quite a few of your ‘working-class’ plumbers probably earn more than that.

But hey, perhaps you don’t think that highly qualified people such as barristers or in the case of Vince cable, chief economic advisers to Shell, shouldn’t be encouraged to become MPs ?

After all, of what possible benefit to the country’s legislature could these highly qualified people be ?

A top civil servant (and no, they’re not working-class) can 3 times more than an MP. I’m not convinced that there isn’t an anomaly there.

As I’ve said before, my problem with MPs is that they’ve screwed the country up. But apparently everybody else isn’t bothered about that, they are far more concerned about whether some upper-class Tory grandee took the p1ss and claimed to have his moat cleaned, or a Labour MP handed in his receipt for his Waitrose shopping.

I would rather that they didn’t take the piss, got a proper wage, but more important of all, didn’t screw the **** country up.

For your information, I haven’t had a wage rise since EU enlargement in 2004 when the New Labour fukwits flooded the construction industry with cheap East European labour. In fact, my wages have gone down in the last year. AND, I haven’t worked since last friday because the construction industry is truly screwed.

That is what concerns me. Not the media whipped up hysterical bollox about someone ‘flipping’ their house.

Want to know why British politics is in such a dire state today ? Well just look at people’s priority about what is ‘important’. That should answer the question for you.

In fact, quite a few of your ‘working-class’ plumbers probably earn more than that.

But at least they WORK for it!

Also with the gap between rich and poor getting wider people feel cheated.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/may/08/poverty-equality-britain-incomes-poor

Being “creative” about your address in order to get access to better schools/healthcare etc is nothing new, there’s hundreds of attempts on it every year just to get into the local primary school round the corner from my Mum’s house, children listed as living with aunts/uncles/grandparents etc just to fall inside the catchment area.

It works with benefit fraud too, the inner city school that my Mum used to teach at had god knows how many families claiming benefits from 2 councils since they’d have a house in both Lambeth and Southwark.

Also with the gap between rich and poor getting wider people feel cheated.

Well **** me and fiddle with me t1ts on a saturday night ……… I think the penny might have started to drop.

Yes soops, that story broke at exactly the same time as the MPs expense row. Where was the public’s outrage and indignation over it ? Who was calling for MPs heads to roll ? Apparently there were far more important stories such as MP X flipping his home, or the current cost of floating ornamental duck houses.

When I heard that, “Britain under Gordon Brown is a more unequal country than at any time since modern records began in the early 1960s, after the incomes of the poor fell and those of the rich rose in the three years after the 2005 general election” I was seething with anger, incandescent with rage at, as Neil Kinnock would say, ‘the grotesque sight of a Labour government’, yes a Labour government, being responsible for such scandalous level of inequality, and the shameful stain it has brought on Britain. On the other hand, I was more ‘entertained’ by the expenses scandal, specially by some Tory Grandees creative “cos we is worth it” claims.

The very reason the Labour Party was founded was to fight for peace and social justice. This present shower of ****, have completely and comprehensively failed on both counts. We should be stringing up MPs from lampposts for that, not because they claimed 88p for a bath plug.

But no, illegal wars based on lies don’t matter, the poor getter poorer whilst the rich are getting richer don’t matter, however, woe betide them if we catch them claiming expenses for having their rose bushes trimmed.

British politics is fecked. And responsibility for that lies with the electorate. Simple as.

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btw soops, being an MP requires much harder work than being a plumber. If you can’t figure that out, then that might help explain why herberts who aren’t up for the job, keep getting elected.