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grufty jim G
grufty jim May 15, 2009 16:46:09
Replying to geoffrey_prime

geoffrey_prime wrote:
You are talking crap anyway, Cameron's claims are limited to mortgage interest and utility bills on his second home... which is exactly what MP's should be claiming for... and nothing more.
My whole point is that MPs shouldn't be claiming their "mortgage interest and utility bills" from the public purse. It may be within the rules, but guess who sets the rules?

It's weird, it's like a mafia boss insisting the murder he's committed shouldn't be punished because it was carried out according to the rules laid down by the Cosa Nostra code.

This "second home allowance" nonsense is just a way of declaring corruption within the rules. Why didn't British MPs go the route of more transparent democracies and commission a block of small but functional apartments owned by the public for use by MPs when parliament is in session? Why decide upon a system that allows MPs to build up bleeding property portfolios on expenses?

The whole system is corrupt, and any real Conviction Politician would have set an example a long, long time ago and would not have waited until the media descended.

The guy's a millionaire. He rakes in over a 100 grand per year as leader of the opposition, and doubtlessly has a nice little sideline in after-dinner speeches and magazine columns. He lambasts the public services for their lack of financial responsibility. Yet he couldn't resist that extra £20k per year in expenses for a second home.

And given that his constituency is Witney (an hour by train from central London), why the hell does he need the second home anyway? It's not like he'd face a commute from Aberdeen every day. He lives 10 minutes from Oxford for crying out loud!

N nigelswift
nigelswift May 16, 2009 07:10:39
Replying to grufty jim

grufty jim wrote:
This "second home allowance" nonsense is just a way of declaring corruption within the rules. Why didn't British MPs go the route of more transparent democracies and commission a block of small but functional apartments owned by the public for use by MPs when parliament is in session? Why decide upon a system that allows MPs to build up bleeding property portfolios on expenses?
IMO you've pointed to the part of the corruption that absolutely dwarfs all the rest. A rent allowance is obviously the only sensible way to deal with it - capped at a reasonable level and payable only as long as it's needed.
So why did they sanction private ownership and publicly subsidised mortgages? There's only one possible reason: for the past decade or two if you bought a house in London and timed it right you could anticipate a vast capital gain. £500K becomes £1,500,00 and you gain the difference. And here we are tut-tutting about the cost of cleaning a moat!

Here's a suggestion: if paying back bits that shouldn't have been claimed is the order of the day, let's have them pay back the capital gain on that portion of their houses that we've paid for. I wouldn't be surprised if that would mean MPs haven't cost we the taxpayer anything to run, and we might even have made a profit on our investment - as so we should. If we've invested in London property for the past 15 years and come out of it with 0% gain each year, and someone else has pocketed the profit, we're mugs. And if the someone else that gained was the same someone else that set it up that way and is now making a big deal of paying back a footling gardening bill but not the vast capital gain, we're even worse mugs.

M Merrick
Merrick May 17, 2009 18:16:56
Replying to grufty jim

grufty jim wrote:
My whole point is that MPs shouldn't be claiming their "mortgage interest and utility bills" from the public purse. It may be within the rules, but guess who sets the rules?
There are examples of MPs doing exactly what Cameron doesn't.

According to the Independent, Labour millionaire Geoffrey Robinson has several properties yet doesn't claim any second home allowance.

On Cameron's own benches, Tory Philip Dunne has a second home in London but refused to claim any second home allowance because it is 'not the right thing'.

And, as you point out Jim, Cameron's constituency is close enough to London to commute anyway. LibDem David Howarth is from further away yet he commutes.

Personally, I'd like to see Cameron be a real conviction politician, preferably a conviction from the the War Crimes Tribunal for complicity in the Iraq war.