Them and Us

The Guardian reports on the case of Andrew Gibson, 49, a budget officer in the Parliamentary Fees Office.  He has been jailed for nine months after fraudulently claiming nearly £6,000 in fake MPs' expenses claims.  The offences came to light during the inquiry into MPs' expenses.  He can have no complaints about his conviction or sentence.

It is worth spending just a minute reminding ourselves of what was happening in the Fees Office.  Day after day, week after week, Mr Gibson was processing claims for everything from luxury goods costing thousands of pounds (£8,000 flat screen televisions) to trivial claims (Kit Kats, Jaffa cakes and scotch eggs) and the truly bizarre (moat cleaning, floating duck houses and mole removal).  He knew that MPs were on the fiddle, but that was no excuse for him to join in.

Some will wonder if Mr Gibson was given the opportunity to repay the money and walk away with no further consequences, as so many of our MPs seem to have been allowed to do.  Others may wonder when the long arm of the law will catch up with the MPs as it has with Mr Gibson.

One ordinary Joe soap was caught up in the expenses scandal, he defrauded the public purse of £6,000 and he is behind bars, as he should be.  Over two hundred MPs were caught up in the expenses scandal, together they defrauded the public purse of more than £2,000,000 and most of them were let off scott free, some of them are still MPs today.  For many it will seem like one rule for them another rule for us.

Unfortunately it is now old news; consequently nothing will happen.
Best Wishes
Will

Nadine's attack on scrougers lacks credibility

Nadine Dorries MP for Mid Bedfordshire has been blogging about a constituent of hers who has tweeted 35,000 times in six months. Many of this persons tweet relate to nights out and drinking, yes you guessed the constituent is unemployed but seems to spend no time at all looking for work.  I whole heartedly agree with questioning whether this person should be receiving benefits but believe that Nadine's attack lacks credibility; here's why.

As a society we failed to clean up the Houses of Parliament following the expenses scandal. How can we expect benefit scroungers to take fraud seriously when so many of our MPs are guilty of expenses fraud? There is basically no difference they are both helping themselves from the public purse.

It is an absolute prerequisite for good governance that our elected representatives are honest.

Miss Dorries is the MP who defended the now discredited old expenses system and claimed that the expenses were really part of their salary and therefore an entitlement. She accused The Telegraph of launching “McCarthyite witch hunts” against MPs and suggested that the prospect of having their expenses published had left many of them “beginning to crack”.

To many her rant against scroungers will seem like just a laughable case of the pot calling the kettle black.

MPs lacking the moral authority to deal with social issues; that is the real cost to taxpayers of failing to clean up Parliament.
Best Wishes
Will

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

Did anyone notice how many times the word "sorry" occurred in Ed Millibands speech to the Labour Party Conference.  I listened carefully to the whole speech and didn't hear it at all.   I checked on the Internet there I found a count of various buzz word used in his speech; Generation 41 times, New 34, Responsibility 22, Society 15, Immigration 6 Journey 5, but sorry didn't appear once.

Towards the end of his speech Ed talked about Labours journey back to power; this is what he said;

"This week we embark on the journey back to power.
It will be a long journey involving hard thinking for our party.
We do not start that journey by claiming we know all the answers now.
We do so by setting a direction of change. "

He is wrong "setting a direction of change" is the second step of their journey.  The first step is to say sorry; until Labour do that their journey will not even have begun.
Best Wishes
Will

It's only going to hurt if...

I have copied this entire post, word for word, from Old Holborn and make no claim to authorship at all.  

I just thought it was brilliant and wanted to share it with you.

 

Cameron is preparing the ground for a massive cut in public services and hopefully a reduction in our bloated state in order to reduce the deficit that 13 years of a psychotic Labour gave us. Bring it on I say. It will affect every man, woman and child he says, perhaps for decades. No it won't. Not me.

You will only "suffer" if:

You cannot play a game of football without AstroTurf or floodlights, courtesy of the Council and a £3m pitch to keep da Yoof happy. In every town and village up and down the land.
You really liked having an Olympic pool in your town, even though you never used it.
You need everything translated into Somali
You have decided Poles are the right people to pick carrots whilst you are the right person to sit on the sofa all day claiming benefits
You are so incapable as a parent, you need an army of hairy lipped sandalistas to do the job for you.
You are incapable of taking responsibility for your own behaviour and actions
You demand your child has one on one tuition at my cost because it's easier than teaching him not to stab anyone at school
You bought things to impress other people and can't make the payments
You got your job because you are unemployable in the private sector
Your lifestyle "choices" make you unemployable
You believe that astral gems and aromatherapy are really needed in remote Welsh villages
You are fat and demand I buy you a mobility scooter instead of hitting the salads
You think it is your right to be treated equally even though you are a convicted thief
You think it is the States job to feed you, house you and clothe you
You are a Communist and expect everything for nothing, like in the 70's.
You are Welsh or Scottish and used to living on handouts whilst drunkenly shouting abuse at the English, the ones paying for it all.

Luckily, like a few million others in this country, I am none of the above and I'll be just fine. I'll get by, selling my skills, growing some food, ignoring fashion and consumerism, making do and taking responsibility, brewing my own beer, cooking my own food, insuring my own health, repairing my own car, mowing my own lawn and raising my own family. I have never ever required the services of a Diversity Coordinator and neither have you. They won't be missed at all.

So before you all panic, just ask yourselves what exactly you require from a bloated parasitic State that eats up nearly £1 TRILLION a year of OUR money, stolen from our children? A war in Iraq? A guided bus system in your local town? Albanian speaking nursing assistants? A potato marketing board? A general teaching council? Traffic Enforcement Officers?

It would be immoral to hand the bill Labour has now presented us with to our children. They will gain no benefit from the last 13 years of collective insanity. The very least we can do is hand them a clean sheet to make their own mistakes, just as we were handed one 13 years ago. Oh, and if you have kids, teach them that two jumpers make perfectly adequate goal posts, no need for Nike trainers, astro turf and a sparkling new multimillion pound "leisure" centre.

I'm far from certain that the cuts are going to happen to the extent envisaged; as I have said before tax increases are so much easier to implement.  But I trust you enjoyed the thought that it might happen.

Best Wishes
Will

A Less Acerbic take on the Failures of New Labour

Stein Ringen is a Norwegian sociologist and political scientist (Wikipedia).  He is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford.  In 2009 be wrote a book entitled the 'The Economic Consequences of Mr Brown'

Here he gives a highly visual ten minute summary on the main thesis of the book: -




I found the video interesting and entertaining in-so-far as social economics can be described as entertaining.

I was astonished by Prof Ringen's statement that "new Labour failed not because of incompetence but in spite of competence" especially as he then lists a series of bad decisions made by the government.  Bad decisions sounds to me almost like a definition of incompetence.  I also think that the marginalisation of the House of Commons together with the centralisation of government around ten Downing Street and the irrelevance of  local government are not just things that arrived out of nowhere but were largely the products of New Labour.

But what the hell, its an interesting video anyway.
Best Wishes
Will

Diane Abbot takes a Grilling

For me Diane Abbot epitomises all that is rotten about Labour policy, Andrew Neil gives her a much needed grilling ...



The truth hurts doesn't it Diane
Best Wishes
Will

The Eighty Twenty Rule

Every student knows that scoring eighty percent in an examination takes twenty percent of the effort, scoring the final twenty percent takes eight percent of the effort.  If only deficit reduction was so simple.

David Cameron has promised to reduce the deficit using twenty percent from tax increases and eight percent from cuts in government expenditure. What bothers me is that raising taxes is like turning on a tap, it takes little or no effort; whereas making savings from government expenditure takes enormous effort, perseverance and time.  Cameron's eighty percent deficit reduction from reduced government spending will take 99.99999... percent of the effort, the twenty percent deficit reduction from tax increases will take virtually no effort at all.

The emergency budget saw the first tax increases, I hope we will see some real savings and not just projected or anticipated savings from expenditure reduction before there are further tax increases.

It's easy to talk the talk on cuts.
Lets see some delivery
Best Wishes
Will