they are not screwing the taxpayer thats why. they are getting expenses (small scale compared to the bankers massive theft of recent years) that are approved within the regulations. they get paid a pittance for running the country compared to for eg the scum in the banking world. I am not sure how people think they can run a second home that they are required to have for the job on such a low income.
the attack on the MPs is an attack by the bankers and their funded press to stop parliamnet and the population pursuing the real agenda, which is the investigation, prosecution, retrospective taxation, imprisonment, reform etc of the thieving low life that is the city bwankers at the top of the banks, who have stolen more from the taxpayer in an hour than all the MPs would get in a hundred years.
I dont normally get involved in the political stuff on here mainly because it goes over my head some of you are far more informed than i could ever be, saying that i feel you are right Ken in your anger towards the bankers and the situation they have caused however, On the news last night they showed a comparission between 2 labour MP's
both mps for 7 years
both live in the same road
One travels to the HOP by train
one has a flat in london and a home by the seaside
one has claimed 5k
one has claimed 70K
One is a crook and the other isnt claiming for expenses is fine by me but you should only be able to claim for what is right not the stuff that some of them seem to be claiming for
[cite]Posted By: nth london addick[/cite]I dont normally get involved in the political stuff on here mainly because it goes over my head some of you are far more informed than i could ever be, saying that i feel you are right Ken in your anger towards the bankers and the situation they have caused however, On the news last night they showed a comparission between 2 labour MP's
both mps for 7 years
both live in the same road
One travels to the HOP by train
one has a flat in london and a home by the seaside
one has claimed 5k
one has claimed 70K
One is a crook and the other isnt claiming for expenses is fine by me but you should only be able to claim for what is right not the stuff that some of them seem to be claiming for
Wow Mp that only claimed 5k in expenses. He is obviously a lot more honest (so long as that £5k wasn't for a hot tub since he heard they can rinse expenses)
[cite]Posted By: kentred2[/cite]they are not screwing the taxpayer thats why. they are getting expenses (small scale compared to the bankers massive theft of recent years) that are approved within the regulations. they get paid a pittance for running the country compared to for eg the scum in the banking world. I am not sure how people think they can run a second home that they are required to have for the job on such a low income.
the attack on the MPs is an attack by the bankers and their funded press to stop parliamnet and the population pursuing the real agenda, which is the investigation, prosecution, retrospective taxation, imprisonment, reform etc of the thieving low life that is the city bwankers at the top of the banks, who have stolen more from the taxpayer in an hour than all the MPs would get in a hundred years.
open your eyes
You open yours. I've worked in banks (investment and retail, UK and abroad) for years and, while I've seen some mucky old practices. However I have never seen a situation where anyone would claim company money to pay for accomodation when they lived 10 miles away from the office. I've never seen anyone have a £5000 a month flat that they lived in once a year and I've definitely never seen anyone claiming that their employer should pay for thirty five thousand pounds worth of rennovations to their own personal family own while they are staying away on business - by claiming that their family home is the one that they want to "claim for" rather than their hotel room or apartment. Claiming it's OK for people who get paid out of the public purse to effectively steal this way is swivel eyed madness. And, claiming they get paid a comparitive pittance calls into question your definitions of these terms. If someone who is getting paid well over 100 thousand pounds to do a job that allows them to do plenty of paid part time work on the side and will double their future earnings potential cannot manage on that without theiving from the public that elected them, it's a pretty poor show.
I wouldn't be against prosecutions against guilty bankers, but your ranting like a angry tabloid with the rational bits tippexed out.
good points McLovin but they are not stealing as it is all within the rules.
I repeat my point that the banking world has cost the tax payers MILLIONS times more through their care for their own pockets rather than their customers ... money that comes, like taxes, from me and you. the benefits that the MPs claim for as extras are basic to the top bankers .. natwest are still for eg paying for home security for their EX employees!
the country's indignation should be continued to be aimed at the bankers not at those that will bring them to court.
and as for your mucky old practices! that is the sort of never mind old boy excuses that has brought the country to this depression. the whole system is corrupt and aimed at short term lining of bankers pockets as you well know
I think it is more that the multi-billion £ figures being banded about re: the banks losses and bail out are so large that most people, me included, struggle to put them into any sort of context.
On the other hand a chandelier or £75k in expenses are figures that people can relate to their own lives and incomes and are quite rightly angry about.
MPs may not have broken the rules but SOME of them were certainly bending them every which way to get the maximum possible within, and in the cases of the Convey (sp) who employed his son while the child was at uni, outside the rules.
The Bankers have done far more damage to the country, I agree, and deserve to be punished but for what. Being risk taking capitalists? Maximising profit? They would argue that that was what they were employed to do and few people complained, in the Govt, the banks or shareholders when the going was good.
I would think the punishment would be for taking risks and maximising short term profits (with known losses to come) solely for their own gain at the detriment of their bank, their customers and their country.
[cite]Posted By: kentred2[/cite]good points McLovin but they are not stealing as it is all within the rules.
I repeat my point that the banking world has cost the tax payers MILLIONS times more through their care for their own pockets rather than their customers ... money that comes, like taxes, from me and you. the benefits that the MPs claim for as extras are basic to the top bankers .. natwest are still for eg paying for home security for their EX employees!
the country's indignation should be continued to be aimed at the bankers not at those that will bring them to court.
and as for your mucky old practices! that is the sort of never mind old boy excuses that has brought the country to this depression. the whole system is corrupt and aimed at short term lining of bankers pockets as you well know
I'm more focused on lining my pockets in the longer term, but I take the point KR. But on the point of whether it is not in the rules: come on. If I'm representing people in Luton and working in London I know it would be stealing to claim 35 grand to have work done on a house in Southampton and expect the taxpayer to pay for it. It's just plain wrong. Personally if I think something is morally wrong but still in the rules, I wouldn't do it. I reckon the dude that paid a grand for getting a few lightbulbs screwed in or the one that literally claimed for shit (for his fields) or the one that was claiming for a "second home" that they got tax benefits on for claiming it was a main residence when they sold it for massive profit, knew they were stealing. Bankers were pretty much just blindingly incompetent in managing their customers' and shareholders' money and that has lead to a public cost. But it's a different thing: Bankers got payouts that were inappropriate given his failure and what he's cost the company and country, but they didn't fill in a forms claiming for porn and decorating houses that they planned to sell.
[cite]Posted By: kentred2[/cite]I would think the punishment would be for taking risks and maximising short term profits (with known losses to come) solely for their own gain at the detriment of their bank, their customers and their country.
I think that's fair enough comment, although it wasn't always for personal game. A lot of these people weren't geniuses, they were doing something that made lots of cash so they did it more and more because they weren't smart enough to realise that they were getting lucky when they were making money.
But to Henry's point, I hadn't thought about it quite as clearly: it is (to me anyway) worse for an MP to claim 75 grand for a posh light fitting than for an MOD official to make a misjudgement and buy an IT system that fails to deliver and costs £2M. One's stealing within the rules, the other is just poor judgement, bad luck or incompetence and not for personal gains.
Politicians in general have to show moral leadership and what this shows is completely the opposite.
Despite the Daily Mail miserabilist rhetoric, our political culture is among the least corrupt in Europe and in general our politicians play by the rules rather than make them up as they go along - in the way Berlusconi does in Italy.
In this case the rules are the problem, but that doesn't excuse the people who have exploited them, especially as they made them in the first place. If an MP's pay of £63,000 is inadequate then they should have had the courage to make the case publicly for more and then voted it through regardless of what the media had to say.
As it is they have just played into the hands of the extremists and the apathetic, which is a disaster for democratic politics, never mind one party or the other.
We need, in my view, not only more transparency but an electoral system that makes voting more meaningful in terms of outcomes.
thats the point ----- said several times (as in Kit Kat thread)these MPs have a MORAL obligation to us not to "bend rules". The damage done to the standing of all MPs and UK democracy as a whole is huge. It will be reflected in the poles on 6 June -- not by a protest vote, but by the small turn out.
I know its all parties that had their noses in the trough , but Hazel Blears smiling and laughing as she was questioned ---------- thats taking the piss totaly.
MPs --- didnt break the rules Bankers----didnt break the rules Red Ken-- didnt break the rules
[cite]Posted By: kentred2[/cite]they are not screwing the taxpayer thats why. they are getting expenses (small scale compared to the bankers massive theft of recent years) that are approved within the regulations. they get paid a pittance for running the country compared to for eg the scum in the banking world. I am not sure how people think they can run a second home that they are required to have for the job on such a low income.
Are you joking? For a start i've got a choice to use whichever bank i choose too.That's the private sector and is essentially a business.
MP's get paid well for the job they are supposed to be doing as a servant for all of us.When they are taking money out of the same pot that may mean an elderly person not being stuck in a rusty old bed in a hospital corridoor without any assistance for hours at a time then i think the public has a right to be pretty pi55ed off about it.
[quote][cite]Posted By: nth london addick[/cite]I heard the figure of £63 grand banded about as the pay for MP's
that is a great salary and if they didnt want the salary then they didnt have to take the job.
Dazzler the 5K was over a four year period the mp should have his name up in lights saying well done fella[/quote] That is the kind of wage that a 3rd division footballer earns, is that the type of person we want to run the country, the too old to play in the top flight and those not good enough. My thought is we want the best and that costs money.
But how many voters give any thought as to who is the best candidate as opposed to trooping into the booth and voting for their preferred party? And how many candidates are elected to stand by being the "best potential MP" rather than being the best at brown-nosing their local party activists. Higher salaries won't attract better quality MPs or achieve better government.
Banker v Politicians. In what society does industry and governance run seperately?
Bankers worked hard with politicians to create a l'aissez faire system of governance. It's the bankers job to make money and they did that for years creating huge tax revenues, in fact being the major contributor to the UK exchequer. Ever heard of the Enron loophole? A de-regulation of oil futures happily passed by democrats and republicans alike. A huge ammount of speculative money flooding the oil market, no significant increase in demand for oil but hey ho a massive hike in oil prices which we all pay. Impossible to happen without government agreement.
In my knowledge many people in finance work bloody hard and receive bonuses tied to their performance; maybe an inccorrect rewards system at times. Some banks like JP Morgan understood the impossibility of securitising massive mortgage books, and pricing the risk. Other's didn't. The fact that too many banks didn't was compounded by the complete abnegation of ANY attempt to properly regulate derivative markets and the idiocy of many players within that; this goes much further than banks and into huge numbers of companies that play with derivatives off-sheet to cover up poor results. I agree banks have messed up, politicians just did feck all. So if there's no proper regulation of CDS's, underlying capital ratios, and the unfettered acceptance of uncovered positions does that mean the banks are doing anything illegal? Legally the vast majority of bankers worked within the rules, and when they didn't they paid a pittance in fines to carry on doing the same. Tacit acceptance from government or sheer incompetence?
Most 'bankers' even senior staff don't earn sixty grand plus tens of thousands extra in expenses. Why should someone who works bloody hard and earn say 100,000 have his tax increased by politicians? I am not intrinsically against higher rates of tax, just that it should not be imposed by those who earn more through tax avoidance schemes. Why should the Labour government close multiple tax 'loopholes', ones that affect say PAYE van drivers taking their vehicle home, but give themselves a tax free lump sum irregardless of the reality of their property situation? The scheme is for a a second home. If they're representing an area then it's up to them to be of that area. I don't choose a damn job and demand a tax free sum to pay for my mortgage. I've had to pay for my commute into London, and don't have the luxury of a paid for pied a terre. I don't charge my food and renovating costs to my employer. I pay tax for the money I receive, and I pay tax on what I choose to buy. Not all but many MP's are ripping off the exchequer.
By de-coupling MP's from the pressures which most of us face, it happily de-couples them from the same economic pressures and an understanding of them. Maybe if they didn't get a tax free home on us they'd consider why the CPI and excluding house prices from their 'inflation' bucket is bollox.
Finance is hugely complicated and difficult to impose morality on, human nature tends to excess when unfettered. Most would abuse an expense account like MP's have, but it's a bloody expense account which is stone cold simple to impose morality and common sense on. Unless of course the venal and unaccountable audit themseleves. How will they ever impose regulation in finance where it's needed?
[cite]Posted By: nth london addick[/cite]I heard the figure of £63 grand banded about as the pay for MP's
that is a great salary and if they didnt want the salary then they didnt have to take the job.
Dazzler the 5K was over a four year period the mp should have his name up in lights saying well done fella
That is the kind of wage that a 3rd division footballer earns, is that the type of person we want to run the country, the too old to play in the top flight and those not good enough. My thought is we want the best and that costs money.
you need people who understand what it is like to live in the real world, people that can empathise with peoples situation and problems and work for them, I dont want brilliant people running the country i want prudent and sensible people who make the decisions beacuise they are true and fair.
When you encourage larger salaries you encourage people to do the job because of the money not because they want a job that allows them to serve and do the best for thier constiuats (sorry about spelling_)
Comments
the attack on the MPs is an attack by the bankers and their funded press to stop parliamnet and the population pursuing the real agenda, which is the investigation, prosecution, retrospective taxation, imprisonment, reform etc of the thieving low life that is the city bwankers at the top of the banks, who have stolen more from the taxpayer in an hour than all the MPs would get in a hundred years.
open your eyes
both mps for 7 years
both live in the same road
One travels to the HOP by train
one has a flat in london and a home by the seaside
one has claimed 5k
one has claimed 70K
One is a crook and the other isnt claiming for expenses is fine by me but you should only be able to claim for what is right not the stuff that some of them seem to be claiming for
So tight rules, Independent adjudicators, enforcemenent and imprisonment for me.
We the general public deserve better and I guess we must fight for it.
Wow Mp that only claimed 5k in expenses. He is obviously a lot more honest (so long as that £5k wasn't for a hot tub since he heard they can rinse expenses)
You open yours. I've worked in banks (investment and retail, UK and abroad) for years and, while I've seen some mucky old practices. However I have never seen a situation where anyone would claim company money to pay for accomodation when they lived 10 miles away from the office. I've never seen anyone have a £5000 a month flat that they lived in once a year and I've definitely never seen anyone claiming that their employer should pay for thirty five thousand pounds worth of rennovations to their own personal family own while they are staying away on business - by claiming that their family home is the one that they want to "claim for" rather than their hotel room or apartment. Claiming it's OK for people who get paid out of the public purse to effectively steal this way is swivel eyed madness. And, claiming they get paid a comparitive pittance calls into question your definitions of these terms. If someone who is getting paid well over 100 thousand pounds to do a job that allows them to do plenty of paid part time work on the side and will double their future earnings potential cannot manage on that without theiving from the public that elected them, it's a pretty poor show.
I wouldn't be against prosecutions against guilty bankers, but your ranting like a angry tabloid with the rational bits tippexed out.
They should also sack The Speaker of The House after his rant yesterday.
I repeat my point that the banking world has cost the tax payers MILLIONS times more through their care for their own pockets rather than their customers ... money that comes, like taxes, from me and you. the benefits that the MPs claim for as extras are basic to the top bankers .. natwest are still for eg paying for home security for their EX employees!
the country's indignation should be continued to be aimed at the bankers not at those that will bring them to court.
and as for your mucky old practices! that is the sort of never mind old boy excuses that has brought the country to this depression. the whole system is corrupt and aimed at short term lining of bankers pockets as you well know
On the other hand a chandelier or £75k in expenses are figures that people can relate to their own lives and incomes and are quite rightly angry about.
MPs may not have broken the rules but SOME of them were certainly bending them every which way to get the maximum possible within, and in the cases of the Convey (sp) who employed his son while the child was at uni, outside the rules.
The Bankers have done far more damage to the country, I agree, and deserve to be punished but for what. Being risk taking capitalists? Maximising profit? They would argue that that was what they were employed to do and few people complained, in the Govt, the banks or shareholders when the going was good.
I'm more focused on lining my pockets in the longer term, but I take the point KR. But on the point of whether it is not in the rules: come on. If I'm representing people in Luton and working in London I know it would be stealing to claim 35 grand to have work done on a house in Southampton and expect the taxpayer to pay for it. It's just plain wrong. Personally if I think something is morally wrong but still in the rules, I wouldn't do it. I reckon the dude that paid a grand for getting a few lightbulbs screwed in or the one that literally claimed for shit (for his fields) or the one that was claiming for a "second home" that they got tax benefits on for claiming it was a main residence when they sold it for massive profit, knew they were stealing. Bankers were pretty much just blindingly incompetent in managing their customers' and shareholders' money and that has lead to a public cost. But it's a different thing: Bankers got payouts that were inappropriate given his failure and what he's cost the company and country, but they didn't fill in a forms claiming for porn and decorating houses that they planned to sell.
But to Henry's point, I hadn't thought about it quite as clearly: it is (to me anyway) worse for an MP to claim 75 grand for a posh light fitting than for an MOD official to make a misjudgement and buy an IT system that fails to deliver and costs £2M. One's stealing within the rules, the other is just poor judgement, bad luck or incompetence and not for personal gains.
Despite the Daily Mail miserabilist rhetoric, our political culture is among the least corrupt in Europe and in general our politicians play by the rules rather than make them up as they go along - in the way Berlusconi does in Italy.
In this case the rules are the problem, but that doesn't excuse the people who have exploited them, especially as they made them in the first place. If an MP's pay of £63,000 is inadequate then they should have had the courage to make the case publicly for more and then voted it through regardless of what the media had to say.
As it is they have just played into the hands of the extremists and the apathetic, which is a disaster for democratic politics, never mind one party or the other.
We need, in my view, not only more transparency but an electoral system that makes voting more meaningful in terms of outcomes.
I know its all parties that had their noses in the trough , but Hazel Blears smiling and laughing as she was questioned ---------- thats taking the piss totaly.
MPs --- didnt break the rules
Bankers----didnt break the rules
Red Ken-- didnt break the rules
same result WE ALL PAY.
And who makes the rules??
I do feel some sympathy with the MP's.Afterall they've got to pay out for all those hookers and rent boys with their salaries!
Are you joking? For a start i've got a choice to use whichever bank i choose too.That's the private sector and is essentially a business.
MP's get paid well for the job they are supposed to be doing as a servant for all of us.When they are taking money out of the same pot that may mean an elderly person not being stuck in a rusty old bed in a hospital corridoor without any assistance for hours at a time then i think the public has a right to be pretty pi55ed off about it.
that is a great salary and if they didnt want the salary then they didnt have to take the job.
Dazzler the 5K was over a four year period the mp should have his name up in lights saying well done fella
that is a great salary and if they didnt want the salary then they didnt have to take the job.
Dazzler the 5K was over a four year period the mp should have his name up in lights saying well done fella[/quote]
That is the kind of wage that a 3rd division footballer earns, is that the type of person we want to run the country, the too old to play in the top flight and those not good enough. My thought is we want the best and that costs money.
Bankers worked hard with politicians to create a l'aissez faire system of governance. It's the bankers job to make money and they did that for years creating huge tax revenues, in fact being the major contributor to the UK exchequer. Ever heard of the Enron loophole? A de-regulation of oil futures happily passed by democrats and republicans alike. A huge ammount of speculative money flooding the oil market, no significant increase in demand for oil but hey ho a massive hike in oil prices which we all pay. Impossible to happen without government agreement.
In my knowledge many people in finance work bloody hard and receive bonuses tied to their performance; maybe an inccorrect rewards system at times. Some banks like JP Morgan understood the impossibility of securitising massive mortgage books, and pricing the risk. Other's didn't. The fact that too many banks didn't was compounded by the complete abnegation of ANY attempt to properly regulate derivative markets and the idiocy of many players within that; this goes much further than banks and into huge numbers of companies that play with derivatives off-sheet to cover up poor results. I agree banks have messed up, politicians just did feck all. So if there's no proper regulation of CDS's, underlying capital ratios, and the unfettered acceptance of uncovered positions does that mean the banks are doing anything illegal? Legally the vast majority of bankers worked within the rules, and when they didn't they paid a pittance in fines to carry on doing the same. Tacit acceptance from government or sheer incompetence?
Most 'bankers' even senior staff don't earn sixty grand plus tens of thousands extra in expenses. Why should someone who works bloody hard and earn say 100,000 have his tax increased by politicians? I am not intrinsically against higher rates of tax, just that it should not be imposed by those who earn more through tax avoidance schemes. Why should the Labour government close multiple tax 'loopholes', ones that affect say PAYE van drivers taking their vehicle home, but give themselves a tax free lump sum irregardless of the reality of their property situation? The scheme is for a a second home. If they're representing an area then it's up to them to be of that area. I don't choose a damn job and demand a tax free sum to pay for my mortgage. I've had to pay for my commute into London, and don't have the luxury of a paid for pied a terre. I don't charge my food and renovating costs to my employer. I pay tax for the money I receive, and I pay tax on what I choose to buy. Not all but many MP's are ripping off the exchequer.
By de-coupling MP's from the pressures which most of us face, it happily de-couples them from the same economic pressures and an understanding of them. Maybe if they didn't get a tax free home on us they'd consider why the CPI and excluding house prices from their 'inflation' bucket is bollox.
Finance is hugely complicated and difficult to impose morality on, human nature tends to excess when unfettered. Most would abuse an expense account like MP's have, but it's a bloody expense account which is stone cold simple to impose morality and common sense on. Unless of course the venal and unaccountable audit themseleves. How will they ever impose regulation in finance where it's needed?
What "rules" have the bankers broken as a matter of interest?
you need people who understand what it is like to live in the real world, people that can empathise with peoples situation and problems and work for them, I dont want brilliant people running the country i want prudent and sensible people who make the decisions beacuise they are true and fair.
When you encourage larger salaries you encourage people to do the job because of the money not because they want a job that allows them to serve and do the best for thier constiuats (sorry about spelling_)