MPs are already up in arms about proposals to get their piggy little snouts out of the expenses trough. Apparently there will be strict restrictions on taxpayers' financing of MPs' second homes and a ban on MPs hiring family members at public expense. Here's one old buffer's reaction, from the BBC website:
Conservative MP Roger Gale said his wife Suzy has worked for him for 27 years and does "a very good, very hard, very long job", 60 hours a week, and was highly qualified. He said the reported proposals were "not realistic".
"I've heard one comment, which I think is absolutely ludicrous, to the effect that apparently somebody living an hour's train ride from London will not be allowed to have a base in London," he said.
"I just don't believe that Kelly lives in the real world, I don't think he knows what kind of hours we work or what kind of job we do."
No, Rog, you're the one who's not living in the real world. Those thousands of taxpayers who take trains into London at unearthly hours of the morning all year round and frequently come home well past dark are unlikely to sympathise with people whose working day starts around mid-morning and who get almost half the year off. Trains on the principal line through my town, which is less than 30 minutes from London, run 24 hours a day. That didn't stop our local MP, whose family home is in another equally convenient commuter town less than 20 miles away, from claiming taxpayer money to purchase a second home in the constituency -- which she promptly rented out to her daughter. Even if we weren't facing a period of restraint on public spending, that would be a serious piss-take. It has to stop.
Anyway, if either Roger Gale or my local MP wants to have a second home, there's nothing to stop them. It's just that, like their constituents, they'll have to pay for it with their own money.
No comments:
Post a Comment