Keeping the bastards honest

I have a cunning plan…

Students have had massive debts imposed on them, justified by the claim that only those earning £21,000 p.a. (£5000 below the median wage) will pay back their loans. Thus, they'll work hard and enter high-paying jobs. I've ranted about the evils of this system before, so I won't go into it again. Let's just accept this argument at face value.

MPs' salaries were introduced in the early twentieth-century to make it possible for poor people to represent us. They're paid £65,000 per year, and receive generous housing and expenses allowances. Many of them retain other jobs too, amazingly: in law, directorships and so on. Afterwards, large numbers of them trade on their parliamentary and governmental experience by taking well-paid jobs in the City, in lobbying and so on. This of course leads to corruption and self-enrichment.

So how about abolishing parliamentary salaries entirely? Instead, offer MPs loans, just like the students. If an MP chooses not to join company boards or sell her inside knowledge to lobbyists, they don't pay the loans back. But if they use their public service as a springboard to riches, power and influence, they naturally owe their newfound wealth to us, and have to pay back their loans.

What do you think?

The fish rots from the head

When an organisation's leader is suspended from his very important job and he's ordered to give taxpayers back £40,000 of 'misclaimed' expenses, you have to wonder how useful he is to us.

Lady Uddin, Lord Paul and Lord Bhatia face suspension from the house for varying terms and have been ordered to pay back £125,000, £40,000 and £27,000 respectively.

Only two other peers have ever been suspended before and the penalties are the most stringent ever imposed. Paul resigned from the party.

Uddin and Bhatia were judged to have deliberately broken the rules while Paul breached the rules demonstrating "gross irresponsibility and negligence" but did not act in bad faith.

Uddin and Paul escaped police prosecution when the Lords rewrote the expenses rules earlier this year to clarify that members could designate a property as their primary residence even if they only visited once a month.

Paul, 115th on the Sunday Times rich list, claimed for expenses purposes that his primary residence was a flat in a hotel he owned to claim overnight expenses. He "freely" admitted he had never spent a night there. The report said: "We do not feel justified in finding, on the balance of probabilities, that Lord Paul acted dishonestly or in bad faith. However, his actions were utterly unreasonable, and demonstrated gross irresponsibility and negligence." Paul faces a four-month suspension and has already repaid £41,982.

I'm talking about Lord Paul, the Chancellor of The Hegemon. Unelected Lord, until recently a non-domiciled tax avoider and now revealed as an expenses cheat. What a role model.

(Oh, and what would be the penalty if someone claimed housing benefit for a place they'd never lived in? It wouldn't be paying back the cash and a four-month suspension…)

So, how's the book diet coming along?

Not bad, comrades, not bad at all. I've bought 3 books in the last ten days, all for work: Motion's biography of Philip Larkin, a book on masculinity in contemporary literature, and Almanac 14, the annual of the Association for Welsh Writing in English, which came with my yearly membership. It's very good. You should all join.

Meanwhile, in Utterly Insane and A Disgrace To The Public Sphere News, the Tory Scum government has displayed its contempt for science and rationality once more. Who've they appointed to the important and influential Health Select Committee? Only David Tredinnick and Nadine Dorries.

This pair are among the more gruesome and dumber Tories. Highlights include claiming that 'unborn children can punch their way out of the womb' (Dorries - they can't - apart from anything else, there's no room to get a good swing); corrupt Tredinnick tried to charge the taxpayer for astrology kit, and thinks that blood doesn't clot when there's a full moon (it does).

" Surgeons will not operate because blood clotting is not effective."

Er… they do. Ever had an appointment cancelled because of the moon? Me neither. Though perhaps this explains why I've never had one scheduled for midnight either.

He also demands that homeopathy be funded by the NHS despite it being an evil and charlatan way to separate the rich and stupid from their money and despite a complete lack of understanding about the scientific method.

Dorries is also pretty lazy (and here) - at least she won't turn up to the committee meetings to spread the insanity. She relies on pseudo-science to support her views and appears not to believe in democracy. She also, as the article points out, has a history of distorting facts to make her sound better. Additionally, she's got a well-deserved reputation as an expenses leech and leading weirdo (famously claiming that the House of Commons was packed with potential suicides following the Telegraph's revelation that she and plenty of other hogs had their snouts deep in the trough - Dorries behaved dubiously over her housing and gave her daughters cushy jobs at the taxpayer's expense because they might struggle to find employment elsewhere. She also channels taxpayers' money to her friends.

Despite this, perhaps these two fully deserve their places on the committee. After all, they've been elected by the great British people. Tens of thousands of voters decided that they didn't want honest, hardworking, sane and rational representatives making law on their behalf. So perhaps they should be allowed to carry on - we'll get the kind of country we voted for. Idiots like me should stand aside or even welcome the kind of legislature and health service we'd get - after all, democracy should rule.

Public relations victory of the week

After one Tory MEP told Americans that the NHS is shit (clue: it isn't), and another millionaire MP told someone on film that MPs were treated 'like shit' and lived on 'rations', here's another headache for millionaire man of the people David Cameron: his rich South Staffordshire MP, Patrick Cormack, has called for MPs to be paid £130,000.

This is the man who, rumour has it, is so safe in bourgeois South Staffs that his canvassing consists of leading a cart horse festooned with posters along the high street. He is also a useless, smug, arrogant, bumptious Bufton Tufton.

His colleague Douglas Hogg, of moat-cleaning-at-taxpayers'-expense fame, wants MPs to earn £100,000 + expenses because

the current MPs' salary was "so low in absolute and relative terms" that members of the professional and business classes would be deterred from entering parliament.

MPs earn £64,000 plus expenses.

The average wage in the UK is £23,000.

Community payback

Steve Bell really is the new Gillray or Cruikshank. Today he imagines our leaders treating themselves as they treat poor people who nick another £10 from the social security…

Seumas Milne nails these bastards completely.

I buried this suggestion in an earlier post. Here's the version I just sent as a letter to the Guardian:

I have a solution for housing MPs which will reduce the opportunity for sleaze and produce social benefits.

Each MP will be loaned a council flat in London as their second home, preferably in the worst-built, highest-crime, least-maintained estate available. They will be offered the same facility in their constituency, though if they already own a home there, moving will not be required. Once the flat is furnished (and maintained) at reasonable expense, no further money will be provided. Living amongst the poorest citizens will keep the MP honest, remind them of their vocation, dissuade them from acquiring expensive white goods, encourage them to consider the most pressing social issues, and will surely lead rapidly to pressure on local authorities and agencies to improve living conditions for the people we consign to such places.

MPs housing crisis solved

I've been ranting a bit recently about the more egregious abuses of MPs - and they deserve it. However, someone on Radio 4 this morning pointed out that this distracts us from the major ripoffs. David Cameron is immensely wealthy. Membership of the Bullingdon Club (pictured below) was £10,000 for each student. Yet he claimed £100,000 to cover his mortgage expenses. It seems to work like this: if you're a Tory, you want a bloody big house. So you buy one and charge us for a mansion.

I have a solution. We should only pay for the London house. But here's the cunning bit. We buy them a council house on a sink estate. Not to punish them, but to remind them how millions of people live. After a couple of months, I bet you'd find pressure on local services to improve absolutely everything!

This is the same reason why I suggested that the Supreme Court be based in Stoke, Birmingham or somewhere equally prosaic, rather than cossetted by gentlemen's clubs, fine dining, the old boys' network and corridors of power.

Pigs in pools

I'm loving this MPs sleaze story. Every news broadcast finds another red-faced cheat saying 'the system's totally rotten'. They all agree that it's totally rotten and has been for years. It's obviously a complete coincidence that they've realised it's open to corruption in the same week that a national newspaper paid some thief a lot of money for the details. Very brave.

I'm also enjoying it because the details reveal that the class structure is alive and well. All the New Labour class traitors are behaving like the 80s yuppies they so admire: John Prescott charged the taxpayer for some beams to make his house look more Fake Tudor. Others claimed for designer goods and posher houses. The dear old Tories, meanwhile, lived up to their image of Lords of the Manor by claiming for chandeliers and, my personal favourite, Douglas 'Viscount Hailsham' Hogg's MOAT maintenance. Isn't that wonderful? Presumably their are also claims for mantraps, armour-polishing, drawbridge oiling and jousting equipment. Michael 'Marquess of Lothian' Ancram, a millionaire many times over, charged the taxpayer for maintaining his swimming pool heater.

Other highlights:

Sir Michael Spicer - thousands for trimming his helipad.

James Arbuthnot - swimming pool cleaning paid for by us, despite the fact that he managed to pay for a £2 million house without even needing a mortgage.

David Davis: £5,700 on a 'portico' (essential to his work for the nation).

Essentially, the Tories appear to feel that their expenses are a kind of National Trust fund: they get a second, third or fourth stately home, and we get to pay for it.

(Paul Flynn, the honest, decent Welsh Labour MP, is similarly outraged).

You all know that I think Hazel Blears is the epitome of everything that went wrong with the left. It appears that Steve Bell agrees (click here for the original):

Ocean's Thirteen? Twice??

I wrote to my MP, Rob Marris, a couple of weeks ago. It's a harmless hobby, and makes me feel temporarily good about our democratic process. I specifically asked him to discuss MPs expenses and housing with the government and party hierarchy. I didn't say that they were all corrupt, or should sleep in cardboard boxes, but I did point out that the system was flawed and that ministers taking advantage of loopholes encourages everyone to believe that all politicians are on the take. I also warned against the dangers of developing a class of professional politicians who've never held any other kind of job. Rob Marris, who is too rightwing for me as a loyal New Labour member, but is honest, thoughtful and hard-working (for which he deserves re-election), sent me this reply. It's not exciting, but it's sensible.

Dear Aidan,

Thank you for your e-mail dated 6 April 2009.

Some of the expenses claims made by MP's from all parties seem pretty strange.

It will not surprise you to hear that I support the general proposition that MP's from outside London should not be out of pocket because, on average, we have to spend 2 or 3 nights a week, for about 35 weeks a year, sleeping in London. For the last 25 years, I have lived in the same house in Penn Fields. I do not live in London. I do not wish to live in London. However, I do have to sleep there, because of my work. That is why I claim (about half of) the London accommodation allowance.

I have spent most of my working life in the private sector, where my away-from-home expenses were reimbursed by the partnership for whom I worked.

However, the whole system of MP's additional accommodation expenses needs to be radically overhauled. It seems to me that there are two possibilities;

1. Set an appropriate amount, and include it in MP's basic, taxable pay;

or

2. Set an appropriate flat, daily rate, not taxed, for each overnight in Westminster, away from home.

In either case, the 'appropriate amount' should be set by an independent, outside body, reviewed annually.

If an MP wishes to live higher off the hog than either of those amounts would permit, then it is up to the MP to do so, paying for the excess living from his or her salary. Conversely, if the MP wants to sleep under a bridge, then they can do so!

There are about 650 MP's. Some of them may well be 'on the make'. However, a number of the rest of us are certainly not, given that we took a pay cut to become an MP!

I am surprised at reports of some individuals claiming a London living allowance, whilst being provided with a grace and favour residence. As you say, Ministerial careers can be short lived. It seems to me there is a simple way forward: get rid of the grace and favour residencies (except for the Prime Minister).

We bought our house to live in, not as a piggy bank. Those who did otherwise are now paying the price. So are the rest of us, with the toxic debt of defaulting mortgages. I confess we did extend the mortgage once, but that was to invest in bricks and mortar, and we quickly paid it off.

There is a political class. Whether, as is suggested, it is separated from the interests and lives of the citizens is perhaps not for me, as an MP, to judge. However, the upper echelons of the 3 main political parties are increasing [ly?] filled with individuals who have not had for any real length of time, what I think most of my constituents would regard as a proper job, before entering Parliament at a relatively young age. In any individual case, it may well be explicable. However, as the body politic, particularly Parliament, becomes increasingly filled with people in that position, and the upper echelons disproportionately so, one does have to question the balance.

You asked me to relay your thoughts to party leadership. I have certainly done so, as regards MP's London expenses, and as regards the backgrounds of those who are increasingly dominating our politics.

Yours sincerely,

Rob.

I think that's pretty fair. MPs need somewhere to live in their consituencies and a base in London (except for the London MPs who seem to think that two or even three London homes is acceptable). A flat rate would be easy to administer and fair. So well done Rob! It's a bit cheeky to point out that he's taken a pay cut to become an MP: for the vast majority of us, an MPs salary would be a massive increase, and if it's true that most MPs suffer financially from being elected, it justifies my point that there is a professional political class which is divorced from society - made up of rich people.

Update: Gordon Brown has proposed a similar scheme.