2215 Hrs GMT London Sunday 5 April 2009:
Only last week, commenting on the disclosures about the embarrassing revelations around the UK Interior Minister [‘Home Secretary’] Jacqui Smith’s domestic life [!!!], we had said the following [see item below this updater introduction]. We also said that even worse facts might appear... They have done... Geoff Hoon, the Crossrail scam-peddling Big Business frontman at the UK Department for Transport [=DfT] has not only been exposed as having behaved with additional embarrassment.. he has shown that he lacks any sense of decency.. Had he possessed a sense of decency then he would not have said what he has been saying according to reports as published all day today [Sunday 5 April 200].. He has been reported as saying that he has done anything wrong.. What more wrong things does a Big Business-peddling Minister have to do before the wrong become a wrong too far? [To be continued] WHAT KHOODEELAAR! had said last week: 0225 Hrs GMT London Monday 30 March 2009: KHOODEELAAR! evidential notes on the culture of unaccountability in the UK Parliament. As we have been arguing for over 5 years, the UK Executive is liable to go off the rails. The rails and the tracks of normality. Of constitutionality. Of decency and decorum as demanded by adherence to democratic accountability.. What has Jacqui Smith’s location this week at the centre of this deeply humiliating personal embarrassment to the role she played and her fellow Blairing MPs played in giving the nod and the yes to the Big Business Crossrail hole scam Bill? What rigours would have spared Jacqui Smith this experience? We say a lot. Had there been a robust, rigorous and ethically active Parliament, most of the personal acts of embarrassment, would not have occurred. But as the UK Parliament is a propaganda place, there to promote the agenda being touted via the Executive, we have these spectacles.…. Accidentally exposed MPS and ministers found with their snouts in the trough or EVEN worse.. [To be continued]
From the MAIL ON SUNDAY website:
MAIL COMMENT: How MPs' gravy train railroads public trust
Last updated at 11:09 PM on 05th April 2009
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Geoff Hoon and Alistair Darling claiming fortunes in second-home allowances while living in grace-and-favour residences... Jacqui Smith billing the taxpayer £104 for a patio heater and £2.50 for a toothbrush holder...married MPs Peter and Iris Robinson pocketing £571,939 a year in salaries and expenses...Labour's Kevin Brennan charging £10,200 stamp duty to the public purse...
And these are just the revelations of one weekend. Truly, our MPs could not have their snouts any deeper in the trough.
Worse, it emerges that, unlike any 'benefit in kind' paid to the rest of us by an employer, MPs do not have to pay tax on their obscene perks. The reason? An exemption passed in 2003 by - you guessed it - the MPs themselves.
Geoff Hoon claimed fortunes in second-home allowances
Of course, all those accused yesterday deny any wrongdoing, saying they cleared their sleazy antics in advance with the Parliamentary Fees Office. But the Fees Office is merely administering a lax rule book of the MPs' own creation.
Nor is there much chance of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, John Lyon, holding them to account, should anybody protest about their conduct. This £108,000-a-year toothless tiger has resolved only one of the 113 complaints he has received so far, with most dismissed summarily.
David Cameron is at least showing signs of recognising the gravy train must be halted, pledging that no Conservative Cabinet minister with a grace-and-favour flat will claim a second-home allowance.
More from Daily Mail Comment...
MAIL COMMENT: Pay up, Mr Ross!03/04/09
MAIL COMMENT: A protest for privacy03/04/09
MAIL COMMENT: A day on, the G20 deal loses its shine03/04/09
MAIL COMMENT: G20 produces an almost historic compromise... 03/04/09
MAIL COMMENT: Amid the razzmatazz, there's work to do 02/04/09
MAIL COMMENT: What shocks Auntie? It's not expenses, but the mole at the Commons31/03/09
MAIL COMMENT: A story of two nations... the private employee and the public sector worker31/03/09
MAIL COMMENT: Learning the lessons of this shameful war31/03/09
VIEW FULL ARCHIVE
But what of Gordon Brown? When asked about the news Mr Hoon had pocketed £70,000 in second-home allowances while living, as Defence Secretary, in the splendour of Admiralty House, the Prime Minister loftily replied that he had more important issues to concentrate on.
Can he really have failed fully to grasp the way in which the deeply unedifying behaviour of so many MPs is corroding faith in the entire political process?
Ordinary people think, understandably, that they're all 'at it'. At this rate, MPs will soon lose the public's trust for good.
The painful truth
After the hubristic euphoria of the G20 summit, Mr Darling brought Britain back to reality with a thud, admitting he had got it 'wrong' by promising the recession would be short and sharp.
When the Chancellor's autumn pre-Budget statement included the extraordinarily optimistic forecast that the economy would begin to recover this year, the Mail dubbed him the 'man with the rose-tinted spectacles'. We take no pleasure in the fact it has taken him fully six months publicly to acknowledge the folly of his predictions.
But doesn't this new-found honesty smack of a cynical softening-up exercise, ahead of this month's Budget?
With the bill for unemployment benefits soaring and government income rapidly decreasing (not least because of the pointlessly ineffective £12billion reduction in VAT), tax rises look inevitable.
It is time for Mr Darling to make clear just how painful these tax rises - and the cuts to the public sector that are surely essential - will be.
Gravy train...part II
Of course, it is not just MPs growing fat courtesy of the taxpayer. Today, a report by the TaxPayers' Alliance reveals that an astonishing 1,022 town-hall bureaucrats were paid in excess of £100,000 as Britain slid towards recession last year.
With the public finances sinking ever deeper into debt, paying 16 of this inglorious brood more than the Prime Minister's annual salary of £194,250 is simply unsustainable. Mr Darling's spending cuts should begin here.
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