March 3rd, 2009

MPs Push Through Two Rule Changes to Hide Fiddles

It is a legal requirement that on the ballot paper an MP gives his home address. It is a connection that allows voters to know where their representative lives. It carries a risk of course, all celebrities would prefer nutters not to know where they live, but that is the price for being in the public eye.

The link has survived the threats of anarchist bombers, fears of Nazi invasion and IRA terrorism, survived until now. Ask yourself why MPs yesterday voted to keep their home addresses secret for the first time in parliamentary history. Is it really over fears for security? Is it actually because they want to keep things private and make it more difficult to discover that they are fiddling their expenses or have us know in what style they live at our expense? Isn’t it really because they want to keep on troughing out of sight.

That is not all, Guido wants to remind co-conspirators that because so many MPs are getting caught fiddling the main home / second home allowance – Julian Lewis is the latest – MPs are also planning to change the rules in the Green Book to make the fiddle permissible. Take a moment to take that in.

The Speaker appointed committee supposedly to look into tightening up the rules and improving transparency has recommended that the biggest and most expensive fiddle committed by MPs be made permissible. It is a Kafkaesque joke at our expense. It will no longer be a blatant fiddle by MPs defrauding the taxpayer, it will be within the rules.

Also the provision in the rules that “any allowance for overnight costs arising from Parliamentary duties in London may not be used for accommodation expenses in respect of a residence designated by an hon Member as his main residence for tax purposes” will not be included in the new Green Book. So the pigs will be able to maximise their capital gains exemption on their HMRC defined primary residence and maximise their expense claims on their self-determined primary residence for ripping off the taxpayer. Only venal MPs would fix the laws for themselves so that they can profitably legally have two different primary residences.

They might as well just spit in our faces and send us the bill for cleaning up.




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