A simple notion.

The Government fails when Parliament lets it.

From a blogpost on EUreferendum.blogspot.com

At last, elements of the Vector story are emerging, drowned in the torrent of stories on MPs' expenses, even though we are seeing the waste of £100 million – roughly the sum paid to all 648 MPs in a year – the unnecessary deaths of at least five men and many more very badly injured.

...

Thus, while [Liam] Fox so casually lays the blame – all blame – at the feet of government, he too shares the blame, with his parliamentary colleagues. They all had the opportunities and power to bring the MoD to book, and failed to do so. In our constitution, the buck stops with Parliament. In this case – and in so many – the institution failed to do its job.

And this really is the nub of the issue, which takes us beyond the child-like tendency to load all our ills on "government". Parliament must accept responsibility for its own mistakes and then it must improve its performance. Otherwise, there is no point in having it at all – at any price.

Defective regulators as far as the eye can see. The FSA let bankers run riot. Parliament has allowed the Government to do the same. Squeaker Martin has allowed, nay encouraged by example, Parliamentarians to twiddle their thumbs and fiddle their expenses. In this particular example Liam Fox himself as the shadow Defence Secretary, the Defence Select Committee and other interested MPs have not used their authority to help the MOD do a good job.

What is democracy?

We seem to have so much of what the political class would call democracy. Votes coming out of our ears. 'Representation' at 6 or 7 different levels of elected Government. Yet the will of the people is routinely ignored. How can this possibly be? We have never had so much democracy! There is little genuine choice when the best you can hope for is choosing between 3 statist parties. They know it. You know it. We know it.

Democracy is dying on it's arse here. Democracy is not just voting once in a while, it is people being involved in politics and Parliament doing the will of the people. Protecting us from the excesses of the State. We have not had that in a long time.

We have too many politicians who talk the talk and wave bits of paper at each other (though leave the Commons strewn with rubbish) but when serious concerns raise their head they are propping up a bar waiting to vote the way they have been told.

Each and every MP has a duty to Parliament, the nation and their constituents that surpasses any allegience to their party and any self serving nature. If they cannot and will not exercise the authority still vested in them despite their gross attempts to pass it to quangos and the EU, it says a hell of a lot about the standards of our politicians.

How many debates have been curtailed? Far, far too many.

How many MPs have spent their careers voting the way their party tells them? Far, far too many. This is not democracy it is a corporatist thugocracy. Too many MPs clearly do not care for the standing of the job they are there to do. Many of them would not be missed if the number of MPs and Lords were halved.

It is through the failings of Parliament, particularly in it's role of holding the Government to account, that so much has crumbled under Labour. The civil service has gone unchecked because the Government was too self-absorbed. The battle between Blair and Brown has been a massively costly one in terms of money waste, opportunities lost and crushing future taxpayers with a millstone of debt. The other 500-odd MPs who are not in Government could have done better to protect us and our way of life. They have largely been happy with the appearance of status quo.

A hell of a lot has been lost while politicians played with themselves. It will take a long time to regain what we have lost. Liberties, jobs, lives and reputations. Squandered, and for what? A few grubby pounds here, a few grubby pounds there, a jolly abroad now and then and free biscuits when you go to the BBC.

We will only have democracy when we can elect MPs who know what it is. This isn't it.

Riddle me this...

If the Green Book on MPs expenses (pdf hosted by Sky News) states the Additional Cost Allowance is "for expenses wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred when staying overnight away from their main UK residence ... for the purposes of performing Parliamentary duties", and Gordon Brown was living in a grace and favour home at the time, why did he claim for the cost of cleaning his private London flat?



Because he could!

Even though it is effectively his third home. 1) constituency home. 2) the grace and favour place. 3) the flat he bought from the estate of Captain Bob.(AKA Robert Maxwell House) Even though Brown in no way needed the use of that flat to do his duties as an MP. Geoff Hoon, Margaret Beckett and Alistair Darling have been at this wheeze as well.(Section 3, 4th paragraph)

Because he could!

Any and all ACA claims by Brown while he is enjoying grace and favour acommodation are as shaky as Tony McNulty's specious submissions.

Because he could.

The system is not at fault.

They are.

Brown is currently keen to proclaim 'The public must have confidence in the system' with regards to the gross abuse of MPs expenses. He is positioning himself as the do something bloke.

He is wrong.

The public must have confidence in MPs first. From that, confidence in everything else naturally follows. Confidence in MPs being in Westminster to represent us not enrich themselves and their families. Confidence in MPs willing and able to look after the nation's interest before their own. Confidence in MPs to spend our money wisely in Government and claim only what is neccessary as an MP. Confidence that MPs will defend our historic traditions and hard won freedoms. Behave with propriety and be decent, upstanding people.

MPs are too craven to their parties, believe they are above the law, toe the EU statist line almost to a man and have allowed the civil service to get out of control.

Incoming MPs are taught how to work the system. It has been claimed this is to supplement their income as the public wouldn't stand for MP pay rises. That is bollocks. They made a choice to submit specious claims. They made a choice to flip their second home designation on a whim. We do not let speeders off the hook by saying speed limits need to be raised. We do not let shop lifters off the hook by saying shops shouldn't have goods on display. We do not let benefit fraudsters off the hook by saying 'well the system is ripe for defrauding, it's not their own fault'. The whole of the UK is a rotten borough. The great stink has returned to hang over Westminster.

No doubt there are decent MPs who strive to be as small a burden on the taxpayer as possible. Sadly they are vastly outnumbered by the cynical and greedy.

How we have got here: Who runs the country?

MPs are less in charge than you might think. Those actually in Government (Ministers and junior ministers) get a lot of guidance from the civil service. The other MPs (including Labour ones) are supposed to be more like a Board of Directors keeping the Government in order and holding it to account. They haven't. They do have the authority to insist the Government explains itself but presumably for a quiet life, chose not to exercise it.

Parliament hasn't done it's job properly for a long time. The opposition was effectively AWOL for a decade and the Labour party cultivated very strong loyalty in it's MPs to the point that they mostly do as the Government says not vote in Parliament as independent minds. MPs collectively abrogated their duties to hold the Government to account. That's why things are in such a mess.

With regard to expenses, MPs seem mostly to view them as an entitlement. They move homes, buy goods and submit claims as a matter of course to enrich their lives not simply as and when they incurr the minimum of costs required to do their job. HM Revenue and Customs would take a dim view of this if I did it. Whoever oversees MP's expenses has not done their job. A position of deference was taken long ago, perhaps when MPs [i]were[/i] mostly decent people who didn't routinely claim the maximum allowance. That deference has not altered to combat the rise of career politicians continually on the make.

In many areas this country is falling apart because people with responsibility are not doing their jobs. The FSA were asleep at the wheel. The banks were too. MPs do not do their duties. The Government sits there playing with itself. The MOD believe everything is going great and they always buy the best stuff. The NHS management look busy and cherry pick statistics to show pretend improvements while elderly patients die in filthy wards. The Police pick and choose the crimes they investigate 'reduce' crime by not recording it. The justice system is not working and due process is being trampled on. Moral hazards and rewards for failure are everywhere. I guess this denial of responsibility arises due to it being the path of least resistance.

Conway twitter...

Courtesy of Plato: Derek Conway - Freelance sleaze buster?

I don't think bringing secretaries and assistants in house is not what is needed. Transparency is. A civil servant will not always be thought of as loyal or trustworthy under any Government. Your wife/mother/son/daughter would be.

From a constituent's viewpoint - would you trust an MP whose staff were an arm of the State?

Bringing secretaries and assistants in house looks like a simple kneejerk to me. More just a possible solution to the problem than some nefarious attempts by Brown - I don't think he or his people are capable of such joined up thinking and a lot of incompetence from others has hitherto been ascribed to plotting, scheming and talented politiking by Brown. Brown gets his strength from the weakness of his opponents. He is not Samson. He is not Hercules. He is is not even Achilles. He's just a malignant shit.

MPs ought to stand up for themselves more. It is troughing when they fiddle the system. It is unacceptable that they repeatedly attempt to cover it up. If they argued from the position of each member being self-employed and able to call on taxpayer's money for justifiable expenses (with the requisite routine publication of those expenses and to have MPs subject to exactly the same tax rules as the rest of us) there would be far less chance to throw mud at them.

I am beginning to see parallels with the financial sector everywhere and this is no different. There is a regulator of expenses and the Green Book is supposed to be the rules. Like the FSA relied on bankers to not be too greedy and largely left them to their own devices, the expenses authorities have relied on MPs being honourable, decent and above reproach. Yet it is plain to see that many of them are instilled with an entitlement culture and a gross welfare dependency. There was simply nothing and no one to stop them cheating, so many of them did. Not even the bastion of er... truth - the media. Too often they are nothing more than a weathercock pointing the way after public opinion has changed.

Again and again these problems boil down to appointed (or self-appointed) regulators not doing what most people would see as their job. Why that is I cannot imagine. There is a pervasive culture of indifference at the heart of the running (and ruining) of this country.

'I will be watching your broadcast very closely.'

How Gordon Brown threw a tantrum during a TV interview.

Embattled Gordon Brown's state of mind is under further scrutiny after it was revealed that he had a tantrum during a series of tough television interviews in No10.

The Prime Minister had to be calmed down by Business Secretary Peter Mandelson after erupting in a series of off-camera clashes with broadcast journalists.

Lord Mandelson soothed a raging Mr Brown and reassured him: 'Gordon, calm down, calm down. It's a bank holiday weekend. You can have a rest.'

'You are impugning my integrity.'

'I will be watching your broadcast very closely.'

The words of a sinister and immature man or those of a pratt? I think it is the latter. Aided and abetted by chickenshits in the Labour Party who couldn't stand up to a fart, the cult of personality under Blair has become some other c word with Brown. The man couldn't be charming if he tried, is unable to cede control to other Ministers and spits his dummy out at the drop of a hat.

Brown has been in charge of national policy since 1997 as he controlled the purse strings. Now with him at the controls of foreign policy too he has been marginalised, rebuffed, humiliated and ignored by other international statesmen and women. Either Blair put themon notice about the corrosive effects of Bottler Brown, or the other world leaders can easily see what all but the Labour Party can.

Now time for the obligatory embedded Youtube video...

Will it get better in the long run?