Are Britain's MP's living in glass houses?

Question

Are our MP's immoral? They take the gravy train to their lovely glass houses and preach to the public how we should live.
I'd like to see a Grand Designs C4 series devoted to MP's houses and flats while I eat my bread and water sandwich.
It would make me feel included in their good fortune

Answer 1

The Indian immigrant Keith Vaz is the most corrupt,but what's new?. His corruption is not just expenses it is Indian anrtform corruption in business. and politics far deeper than expenses. What is it with Indians and corruption?

Answer 2

I don't see a problem with them claiming genuine expenses for travel or accommodation. But some don't need to travel, and therefore don't need a second home.



It is now long forgotten news, in this week of bashing Labour, that one Tory MP, Eric Pickles, finds the commute to London too far. His seat, Brentwood and Ongar is 37 miles from London, and can be reached by tube. Another, Laurence Robertson, MP for Tewkesbury, has racked up £1,000,000 in expenses since 2001, and says he doesn't want reform of the system to "make him poorer".



Tighten up the rules. Accept that some expenses are necessary, pay them out upon proof, with receipts, and move on. Get the MPs back to debating matters like jobs, the economy, NHS etc, instead of this crap.



EDIT - looking at Alana's pic, vote for her! Even if she does look remarkably like that page 3 model off big brother.

Answer 3

Funny old world if you take money for a specific purpose and you then divert some or all of that money to your own pocket , you would be arrested for fraud or embezzlement but if you are a member of Parliament it then becomes perfectly legal because a selected group of your colleges says it is so . Being that they live by the same rules and claim the same benefits isn't that collusion or grand theft in British law. How in the world can anybody who is governed by this bunch of thieves know what or how legal is British law , ( definition in the oxford dictionary of thief Quote : one who steals secretly and without violence) Now if you use Government money to to refurbish a house to the tune of many thousands of pounds , then declare that that house is your first house to avoid tax and you then sell that same house at a vast profit , That is theft whatever means or excuses that you use for doing so . So how can they then make laws governing our behaviour . I have always had the impression that a crook cannot sit in the houses of Parliament so how come the whole place is riddled with them until the rafters creak. A thief is a thief until Parliament says they are doing nothing illegal . Funny old world isn't it.

Answer 4

The problems is, as most seem to agree, that a high proportion of MPs have had their "snouts in the trough" for very many years and so they will never agree to any change in the rules themselves unless it puts even more money into their tacky pocket.



That was why Gordon Brown made a foolish proposal that would have put much more money into their tacky pockets and cost the taxpayer even more, but it still got rejected by the majority of MPs apparently because whether Conservative, :Labour, Liberal or Sinn Fein, they mostly HAVE milked the sytem and want TO GO ON milking the system for their own squalid personal gain.



What is needed when MPs have provedthemselvers to be IRRESPONSIBLE is for new Rules to be imposed by some RESPONSIBLE body that is exclusively concerned with the interests of the UK taxpayer which MPs clearly are NOT.

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The most important change should surely be to end the second homes allowance totally and completely! The only claims for maintenance expenses that should be allowed in future should be on their Constituency Home. Yes all MPs are entitled to have somewhere to stay near Westminster, particularly if their Constitency is many hundreds of miles outside London. But regretably MPs themselves can not be trusted to devise a fair system for themselves, so surely it needs to be imposed on them!



I see no good reason why a Travelodge can not be built somewhere near Westminster (they are putting them upin other areas of London within a few months) with about 700 rooms and one family room reserved for every MP available for 365 days per year whether used or not. Family rooms in Travelodges I have frequently stayed in cost £19 per night B & B if booked in advance. Family rooms Travelodges are more than adequate for any respectable gentleman or lady to have their spouse sleeping with them if they so desire with extra bedspaces for children too.They have very good facilities for computer connections and ample space for a secretary to come in to assist with their office work while they are in London. If any millionaire MP like Eric Pickles or David Cameron wants something more luxurious he or she is perfectly free to obtain it and live there BUT NOT AT THE TAXPAYERS EXPENSE!



But this is the point none of the Party Leaders seem able to understand. Most MPs just refuse to accept that during the present epoch everybody else still lucky enough to have a job is suffering lowering of standards like wage freezes or wage reductions to keep their jobs and everybody has got to cut back. That is basically why everybody is so outraged and calling all MPs, in some cases unfairly, "crooks and fiddlers"

Answer 5

If you are referring to the proverb "people in glass houses should not throw stones" you are so so right.



What I think is behind the unprecedented anger being voiced by so many working people in the UK is that Parliament have been tightening up the law and trying to stir up public anger against ordinary British working people they say are abusing the taxpayer. So in the past few years such draconian penalties as your car being bulldozed if you fail to pay your car tax on time without declaring a SORN, or you will go to jail if you are caught working secretly when you are claiming invalidity benefit or job seekers, or you put your earnings in a secret bank account in Liechtenstein so the UK Inland Revenue is deprived of a few million pounds per year you should be paying in income tax etc. And we know from answers to other questions on YA how angry many hard working people are about having to pay such high taxes to line these various villains pockets so most say Parliament is right on this....-



and then we discover that are elected MPs who have very recently been screaming their little heads off that a police officer had the effrontery to barge into the House of Commons to investigate whether one of their number may have been committing an offence in Law as MPs do not do naughty things like that, we discover from Daily Telegraph MPs are even bigger villains than the moonlighting benefit fraudsters, yet fail to show the same enthusiasm for stopping that sort of abuse of taxpayers money as they show against people paying their car tax on time or hiding their true salaries from UK taxman in a numbered Swiss bank account or saying they have a monochrome tv when they have a coloured one! 



But the real irony is it is the New Labour government that brought in the Freedom of Information Act which has, a bit late in the day, exposed this outrages. MPs Expense Fiddling is not new, it has been going on throughout the 20th century by MPs and Secretaro of States and Ministers of all Parties. What is new is that we the taxpayers are now finding out what has been going on with our taxes, and finding out just how disgraceful our elected representatives behave in their own job and apparently just how unfit many of them are to be in a position of responsibility for our interests.

Answer 6

I can agree that our MPs have to have some expenses for the work they do and for a Second home. What I do object to is their claims for food, council tax, interest on their mortgages etc. Due to the revelations about the expenses fiasco which as they all sy, "Was within the rules", I think its about time that the term, "the right honourable member " should be banned from Parliament immediately.

Answer 7

A system has been allowed which encouraged MPs to claim for everything, and let them assume that someone else would decide what was acceptable or not. This cleverly allowed them to shift the blame, and it is now apparent that the game is up.



Your use of metaphor is amazing - take the gravy train to their glass houses! Let's hope they don't throw stones in their ivory towers.



I have to mention it - how does a bread and water sandwich work? Surely without a filling, it's still bread, not a sandwich. Water is not going to work as a filling, so I think we're talking damp bread here - it wouldn't constitute a sandwich.



EDIT: Lovely rant from Mike below! There's a man who understands the value of debate. So much so that he doesn't allow it on his questions. He blocks anyone who might disagree with his simplistic world view.



Boo! to mike uk!



Ha ha! Mike, you've excelled yourself. A map showing the degree of government corruption in a country should be used to determine immigration policy? So, do we offer asylum to those from countries with the most corrupt governments - their inhabitants are most likely to need our help? Or do we ignore those people because their papers are likely to be dodgy?



Has anyone done the map you really want? Ranking countries according to who has the darkest skin? Then you'll have something to base your personal immigration policy on, Mike.



Interesting question you posted earlier on immigration. Pity you only allow people who agree with you to answer it. What are you scared of?

Answer 8

Well, if MPs do live in glass houses, we can see into them now, and their houses are just about to smash!

Answer 9

MPs charge glass down to expenses and often have 2 houses, then they bring millions of immigrants into the UK as a cheap workforce and give THEM houses without consulting the real British. They then call the real British "immoral racists" for objecting to the importation of millions of people from the most corrupt places of the Indian subcontinent , Africa etc.



They pretend that mass immigration was "beyond control" and was "inevitable" even after the Indian ambassador said in public that Indian immigration to the UK was subject to a quota. Mass immigration and expenses theft are similar in that both were known in advance and both could have been prevented.



We need to save our bacon and put some pork back into the British diet before primitive foreign culture ruins the once most advanced nation on Earth





Muhammad Sceptic/Leon's Asian rant has a nerve to say "do WE allow immigrants from criminal countries like India/Pakistan" when he is a closet immigrant himself from India or Pakistan.He has no right to say "WE" implying he is a real Brit. He is a fine example of Asian subcontinent corruption, pretending to be a real Brit. Asian corruption is ruining our beautiful country and everybody with 2 braincells knows this. The CPI index shows countries where qualifications , police records ,employment records etc can be bought or altered for bribes we should not allow these backward people into the UK. Asians will make of the UK what they made of Asia this has happened already with 3,000,000 Muslims in the UK and it can only get worse.

Muhammed Sceptic/Leon's Pakistan is the 134th most corrupt country from 180 surveyed, India is almost as bad small wonder that we see a high level of dishonesty in his answers. 99.99% of "Asylum Seekers" are liars from corrupt countries and we are mugs for believing them

Answer 10

They are no better than social security scroungers. they are what we have allowed them to become. cheap, petty crooks, who are stealing every thing they can, While they can. Parliament has no honour, and the title, the right honourable, should be stripped from the common thieves that have infested parliament. June the 4th gives us all time to vote all three of the parasite parties out of the EU. lets send a lasting signal to MPs, that we do not want to be represented in the EU by petty crooks and thieves.

Answer 11

Know what really annoys me Sinn Fein claiming for a house in London when they havent even taking up their seats in parliament.They hate the British but they still take our money.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/08/sinn-fein-expenses-martin-mcguinness

Answer 12

It's an absolute disgrace, I just wish the Daily/Sunday Torygraph would be a bit more even-handed in their revelations. I can't believe that the Tories don't still have their noses in the trough!!!

Answer 13

should not kill my dog. a verbal threat and then a dead dog equals killing murder, so if you do live in a glass house be wary or repercussions, it starts with a small dog next thing it will be homicide. so watch that glass, it is sharp

Answer 14

Yes - we should grab the bull by a horn and lob a few stones at their glass houses.

Answer 15

yes it would suit them better if they took a pay cut and sorted this recession out

Answer 16

they dont know what its like in the real world.that is why the country is in a state its in.

Answer 17

Don't know, but if they were they'd be claiming it on their expenses.