There's not much that I can say about the MPs' expenses scandal that others haven't already said with much more venom. See, for example, Mr Eugenides. Somehow I'm not surprised to find that the most shameless crook of all may have been dear old Tony Blair. It appears that he remortgaged his constituency home in County Durham, which cost him all of £30,000, for £265,000, and charged the interest off to the taxpayer. He did this not long before he bought his megapad in Bayswater, and the timing suggests that in effect, the taxpayer financed the downpayment on that house, which is now the base for the Blairs' global moneygrubbing empire. As an example of gall and greed, this can hardly be bettered.
Supposedly there's going to be a new set of rules governing MPs' expenses any day now. A year from now, given the public mood about this scandal, there's also going to be a new set of MPs. However, I still think there's a better solution: put them all up in student-type accommodation in London. As Libby Purves has suggested, maybe tie up an old ship somewhere in the Thames for them to live on. It might be a security risk, but right now, does anyone care?
For the longer term, if we're all feeling a bit more charitable, how about setting aside some of the Olympic village housing for MPs' use after the Games? I was down in the East End earlier today, and it wouldn't be too much of a commute into Westminster for the poor dears -- the Jubilee line goes direct from Westminster to Stratford in less than 20 minutes. I'd be willing to bet that if we put in place an arrangement like that, a whole lot of MPs would suddently discover that their constituency homes were within commuting distance of London after all.
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