All aboard the gravy train

I was really glad to see Peter Hain (right) fall on his sword the other day. I'd been clamouring for him to be booted out by Gordon since the story that he'd not declared over £100,000 in donations hit the news. At the time Bottler Brown didn't have the guts to get rid of him but once the Police stepped in and started the investigation there was only one possible outcome: especially when it was discovered that over half of it had come channeled through the dodgy "Progressive Policy Forum" think tank.

Not that long ago Harriet Harman was also rumbled for accepting donations via a third party, as was Hilary Benn. Both should have gone. Now we hear that Wendy Alexander and Alan Johnson are being investigated for yet more undeclared donations. Johnson's on the ropes a bit at the moment but I think he might just be able to hang on. His line is that he knew nothing about it, thought it was a genuine donation and is blaming the Electoral Commission for making admin errors. One wonders who will be next. Personally I find this hilarious because this is only happening due to reforms brought in by His Holiness the Right Reverend Tony Blair.

Even if Johnson goes, theres nothing to suggest he wont be back. Same with Hain. Handy Mandy went for undeclared loans from Geoffrey Robinson and he'd already been sacked and brought back once!

Supermarket Sweep

The Harman and Benn cases are unusual. Well they're the same case really. David Abrahams - a very rich property developer - had been pumping money to them for 4 years using false identities. This of course is entirely against the rules and Peter Watts, the general secretary of Labour, admitted that he knew what was going on but told everyone it was OK. So he bit the bullet.

Abrahams wanted to build a business park on a stretch of Green Belt land near Durham and had applied for permission. He made donations to Labour using the identities of the "directors" of the development. The Government had initially objected to Abrahams' plans but then, all of a sudden, the objections were retracted. It has quite an unpleasant smell about it and a cynic may suggest that Abrahams was attempting to influence decision making without anyone knowing who he was. If this is the case the Government are just as guilty in being influenced by cash. Who's surprised about that though?

We've had cash for honours which put a black cloud above the Labour party after several rich businesspeople that gave secret loans to Labour were nominated for honours. Nobody was surprised to see the Police draw a blank, even though they went through the high profile drama of questioning Tony Blair three times. I suppose this was some attempt to convince people that they were actually investigating an alleged crime!

I've heard politicians bleating on about how the system needs to be changed because so many are being caught by it. No. Whats the point in having rules if you're going to change them when people start getting caught breaking them? If politicians cant be bothered to abide by them then they should lose their jobs and be locked up like anyone else would be for money laundering and fraud. Dave Cameron has already castigated them for arrogance which is quite right. One or two forgetful ministers might be overlooked but when they are queueing up to be investigated by the Police I think what Dave said is absolutely true.

Labour have irreparably harmed the public trust in Government. I know, sleaze was a factor in the Conservatives losing office in 1997 (so were all the Conservative policies that Labour stole) but Labour has really taken sleaze and outright corruption to a new level where only those with no more lives left get booted out. You work in a bank, you launder money, you're out of a job and landed in court. You work in the Government and you can easily spin and squirm your way out of it.

This aside many Members of Parliament are simply cash siphoning non-entities that exist only to profit from you. The myth that MPs are local people that are fighting for your rights is exactly that - a myth. I remember in the mid 1990's when my brother used to be involved with the local Conservatives and I somehow ended up meeting our MP at the time which was Harold Elletson. Elletson was incredibly posh, wasn't from our area at all and quite honestly I would have had no idea who he was. I'd never even heard his name before. He was typical ivory tower material. The stereotypical Tory Boy from Harry Enfield & Chums.

Since the Tories were voted out and kept appointing hopeless leaders (apart from Hague) he jumped ship to become a bleeding heart Liberal Democrat and sits on one of those pointless committees these days. He is clearly mad because he went from a party with not many policies to a party with loads of unworkable "taxation nation" ones. On second thoughts, someone that can get paid £70,000 for doing nothing must have some grey matter between their ears.

I've not made a point here yet, I know. Well the point is that Mr Elletson may well have been their MP but nobody knew, nobody cared and he didn't really seem to do much. He took his massive amount of cash per year, probably siphoned a large chunk of expenses and sailed away into the sunset. Lovely.

I've just Googled Mr Elletson and it shows that his successor in 1997 was Joan Humble of Labour. I didn't know this. I don't know how to contact her. I don't know what she stands for. Of course, Mrs Humble is not even from this area and being a Yorkshirewoman will probably be supplying information to Government on how best to extract further tax from us Lancastrians to give to former mining villages in Yorkshire. Such is my cynicism but I make no apologies for it.

Democracy: Power to the Pillocks

It baffles me that people are suckered in to the belief that politicians do things for them or that MPs listen to local peoples' hopes and concerns and try to push them through with a passion. This isn't the case. How can it be the case? As I have already mentioned, MPs are rarely from the local area: they are professionals. If there's a place with no MP or candidate, they go and try their luck. They cry some crocodile tears about local issues, get their face in the newspaper and then disappear. Nothing ever happens that can be attributed to the MP, they are forgotten about and sit there on a pile of money until the next election. Best job ever.

Rt. Rev "Teflon" Tony won such a landslide because he managed to convince people that they were voting for him and not some former coal miner on an anti-Thatcher crusade. An undeniably good move. Check out their 1997 manifesto cover on the left: You're not voting for Prezza you're voting for me!

I've watched Prime Ministers Questions and the House of Commons is packed with mostly disinterested morons. The questions and answers are all pre-set and everyone is reading from a script including Bottler Brown. One Labour MP asked a question and had to keep pausing as she struggled to read her little sheet of notepaper - it must have been an issue that she was really passionate about then! Or maybe she was one of the true Old Labourites that can empathise with the Jeremy Kyle generation: flunked school, can't read and wants the state to provide everything by taking money from those that have a job.

On normal days the House of Commons is empty apart from one person speaking and a couple of half asleep overweight people listening and occasionally grunting a question. What are the MPs doing to justify the enormous salaries and pensions they get? Why are they allowed to pay their own family with their massive expenses budget?

Money for Nothing and your Pension for Free

The Conservative MP Derek Conway was today hammered for using his expenses money to pay his son just under £12,000 a year as well as dishing out bonuses of a few thousand despite his son being on a full-time university course. He's also paying his wife £40,000 per year from his expenses. She must be some office assistant. Conway should have been booted out immediately for this.

Some might suggest this is typical behaviour and I would tend to agree: there there is a history of MPs with their hands in the till reported in the press. We have already seen Scottish MEPs being probed for claiming full rent on property they have sub-let as well as MPs being rapped for paying relations to "work" for them when the work is in doubt. Even the infamous IDS (former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith) resigned due to allegations that he was paying his wife a salary for no apparent reason. He was eventually found to have done nothing wrong.

This is a bit of a running theme with politicians, but no smoke without fire I say!

I believe it's 100% wrong that MPs can pay members of their family excessive salaries for menial jobs such as secretarial work, especially since we know that they will do far less work than someone employed by a company to do the same work. There should be limits on what is allowed for certain jobs, or alternatively there should be someone that can make judgements on claims for expenses. There probably is, but unsurprisingly I have no idea who it is or what claims they have ever quashed. Probably none.

Labour have been a source of far more sleaze than John Major's Conservatives were in the 1990's and I think the unrequieted devotion by some to Labour is dissipating - especially now that the Rt. Rev Blair has left and in the true spirit of Labour has taken a £500,000 per year position at JP Morgan in the USA as well as another position as some eco warrior with Zurich group.

The taxes, more taxes and even more taxes ethos brought in by New Labour has caused many staunch Labour voters to lose their affinity with Labour and look for alternatives. This is another article for another day, but I think many people would agree that given the conduct of the representatives of the Government there must be some concern as to their real motives when handling the taxes we work so hard to pay.