| Topic: | Re:MPs expenses | |
| Posted by: | Jonathan Callaway | |
| Date/Time: | 16/05/09 11:50:00 |
| Roland, you suggested in an earlier post that you had resorted to the FOI Act to try and find out what the council was paying its top employees. Have you done the same for councillors' remuneration and expenses? That might be an interesting exercise. It is a pity we don't have a proper local press any more to carry out that sort of digging. And it is a pity one has to resort to the FOI Act at all to find out what our public servants, elected or appointed, are costing us. On the original topic, the expenses or 'allowances' rules for MPs were drawn up by themselves and managed by themselves. Self-policing never works (as we have all seen in the City) but what's worse with the MPs is the failure of even an ineffective system to exercise any sort of restraint over those who have clearly been pushing it to the limit and beyond. All this nonsense about MPs claiming for recovery of mortgage costs when the mortgage had long since disappeared would never ever have passed muster in any commercial organisation where expenses come off the bottom line and are checked by someone before being signed off. And audited, of course. Simple checks and balances, where were they?? The MPs can argue, weakly of course given their institutionalised abuse of the system, that the sovereignty of parliament is constitutionally protected. That's a fair point - parlimentary privileges were hard won over centuries - but human nature has undermined them. They have only themselves to blame. |