You know, some commentators have said we shouldn’t be annoyed about this because there are bigger problems out there, like taking backhanders from lobbyists; I think they’re wrong, partly because two wrongs don’t cancel each other out, and partly because they’re missing the point - lots of these stories are really bloody funny. A moat? Chandeliers? Multiple toilet seats?* A home for ducks? The politicians have done the satirists out of a job this week.
(This one I think is a reasonable claim, actually, but it’s still a bit funny).
I was wondering does anyone have statistics on the total amount they’ve fiddled so far? TBH from the little I’ve read it hasn’t exactly been staggering amounts of money.
Let’s put it this way, the money they’ve fiddled is a hell of a sight more than you, me or any other doper is likely to have stashed under the mattress.
Add the whole lot together and over the years those bastard politicians have defrauded the taxpayer out of millions.
That’s not really a lot of money, anymore. I see your point- Embezzlement is Bad, M’kay?- but really, there are degrees of “misappropriation of taxpayer’s money” and most of the items I’ve seen bandied about in this “Scandal” have been something that’s made me think “You know, if I was a politican, I’d probably be trying to claim that too.”
One aspect of this that overseas Dopers may not be aware of is that this not just any old ordinary news story. This has dominated all reports in all media for weeks now. This has turned in to a very big deal, and shoved all other news stories in to the sidelines.
I think this will go one of two ways. Once the media lose interest in the story, the shock value dissipates, and they bring in a more sensible way of policing MPs’ expenses, we’ll all shrug our shoulders, and life will go on pretty much as normal, or this really will change the face of British politics and democracy, with the role and mix of MPs completely altered.
By fraud “principle”, do you mean law? It is not clear that any of these things were violations of law, and it’s arguable that the laws were written so loosely to allow just such expenses (perhaps written in an earlier, more accepting of corruption, environment).
Do you get the impression that this is Such a Big Deal because of the timing (ie., against the background of public outrage over the recession), or would it have been just as bad if it happened while the public was generally content?
See, over here, everyone is pissed at “the Wall Street fat cats” and the upper management of the car makers, and Congress and the Bush Administration.
Let’s be sensible and realistic about this business shall we?
The MPs who have claimed for all sorts of stuff are nothing more than greedy money grabbing crooks.
I don’t care if they say they’ve stuck to what is allowable, the fact remains that these people have claimed for items/goods which they should not have done.
Yep, the timing certainly helps with the public interest, although the public would always have been interested in the funnier aspects of it.
FWIW, the timing of the story is partly down to the Freedom of Information Act. MPs fought for ages to prevent the FoIA from applying to their own expenses, spending hundreds of thousands in legal fees challenging a journalist who was trying to get the information she was legally entitled to see. That’s another reason for the anger about these expenses.
I don’t care that the sums don’t add up to all that much. When you look at any individual frauds or types of fraud, they never add up to much as a proportion of the GDP, but does that mean we shouldn’t be annoyed about any fraud? Of course not. That’s like someone who killed ten people saying that we shouldn’t be angry at him because he only killed a 0.0000006 of the population.
She has been caught with her nose in the trough and now she is talking depression and suicide. Nonsense. They expect high standards from civil/ public servants and believe that such standards don’t apply to them.
No. I think this is completely independent of anything else that is going on. The British is public is angry because we’re being taken for a ride by the very people who are supposed to be responsible for national morals and values. They have been shown - have been ‘outed’, because they refused to be publicly accountable - to be, at best, devoid of morals, and, at worst, criminals.
It must be said, though, that there have been a few who haven’t made massive claims.
I remember a big kerfuffle about Thatcher’s poll tax (poll tax increase?) in 1989 or thereabouts, and my mother receiving a phone call from the council to ask if she objected to paying it.
I was only 7 or so, though, so I didn’t understand it.
Yes, people did get very upset about that. But Thatcher managed to divide the country over most issues (the miners for another example). This time we’re united.
