Having other things to do all day than watch BBC Parliament, I have no idea whether or not House of Commons speaker Michael Martin - pictured left, in a frock that is simply faaaabulous, darlings - is actually any good at his job. Given the diminishing amount of time some of them spend anywhere near Westminster, neither do many MPs, I'd guess.
But what I do know is that I cannot shove £4,000 of my partner’s taxi bills through on my expense account; if I were caught doing that, it would constitute clear grounds for instant dismissal.
Like most of us, I don’t get a ‘second home allowance’, either; my salary barely stretches to making the payments on my one and only gaff.
It is unclear if Martin has technically done anything wrong in pocketing the money from such a generous scheme for a property on which there no mortgage; perhaps Peter Mandelson or Tessa Jowell - given their special expertise in the field of how to finance home purchase the New Labour way - could advise?
But whatever the rulebook says, this action is morally equivalent to housing benefit fraud, without the ability to claim poverty as a mitigating circumstance.
Such are Mr Speaker’s misdemeanours that there are increasing calls for him to be sacked. Of course, most of the moral outrage that has been gotten up – some of it clearly on the basis of snobbery towards the man that public school-educated Daily Mail columnist Quentin Letts derides as ‘Gorbals Mick’ - is entirely synthetic.
Standards in public life have fallen a long way since the years of Tory sleaze in the early 1990s, and only deteriorated further during the tenure of Tony ‘whiter than white’ Blair and Gordon Brown. In that sense, Martin presumably feels that he isn’t doing anything that everybody else isn’t doing; the tragedy is, he is probably right.
At least he's not trousering brown paper envelopes stuffed full of cash from Mohamed al Fayed, as did certain MPs from the party favoured by Mr Letts.
Time was when the left was well aware of the dangers of people seeking to use elected office for their own financial gain, and raised the demand that MPs should be paid no more than the average wage of their constituents. The return of the slogan ‘a workers’ MP on a workers’ wage’ is long overdue.
Comments (5)
"Such are Mr Speaker’s misdemeanours that there are increasing calls for him to be sacked. Of course, most of the moral outrage that has been gotten up – some of it clearly on the basis of snobbery towards the man that public school-educated Daily Mail columnist Quentin Letts derides as ‘Gorbals Mick’ - is entirely synthetic."
FOR GOD'S SAKE! Mick is a "humble" semi- sheetworker with a bad line in (fat) suits ~ he's "one of us"! It's er... traditional to trouser!
AS Charlie Mingus once said ~ "YOU really don't get it do you"?
Stick to the "cut 'n paste".
What has Housing Benefit fraud got to do with poverty, Dave?
I played a small part in the second trial, and a larger part in re-possessing one tenancy, of two fraudsters. They bought a £500,000+ house with no obvious source of funds and were involved in HB frauds and subletting Council flats at several other addresses.
Not poor, but typical career criminals:
1) older than mid 20s
2) better off than most people
3) self employed
Lumpen petit-bourgeois, as a friend of mine used to say.
The expenses saga has knocked another nail into the coffin on the credibility, integrity and honesty of MPs. Sadly there are some honourable MPs out there, but there are far too many who take advantage of their position (either by breaking the rules or using them to their 'advantage').
Someone has to put a stop to this.
This is the same government that spends our money on expensive advertising campaigns telling us not to give money to beggars, urging us to shop neighbours whom we suspect of cheating on benefits, etc.
We have a Housing Minister who says people should be evicted from council housing if they are not looking hard enough for work. As most councils now won't entertain housing applications unless you have kids or health needs, this would mean evicting families (presumably the council would then have to take the kids in care), or disabled people. We're all supposed to admire how tough the politicians can be when it comes to targetting whoevr is in their sights, but when it comes to our leaders being on the fiddle, well -it's just fun isn't it, and we should not be harsh on the chaps. No wonder the public is apathetic and we have such low turn-outs at the polls.
"A workers' MP on a worker's wage": that's , presumably why the politically corrupt Galloway is so outspoken in his support of Speaker Martin: that and (as Galloway made expicit on "Question Time" last Thursday), Martin is a Catholic. So galloway supports him. And Galloway says he (Galloway) is *not* a "communalist".