MPs and their expenses

This is really hitting the headlines now and looks to be getting bigger - and so it should.

I do not object to MPs claiming expenses - even generous ones - but I do object to them manipulating the rules for personal gain. The idea of "flipping", changing their nominations between main and second home, so that they can claim expenses for sprucing up two properties or avoiding CGT etc is well out of order - if you or I tried this to avoid some tax or other the Inland Revenue would be down on us like a ton of bricks.

Unfortunately the real fall out from all this is not so much the financial cost to the taxpayer (let's be honest, give the state of the country's finances this wouldn't even make it to the rounding let alone get lost in it) but the impact it has on the view of Parliament. We have long considered ourseleves in having a Parliament that in terms of probity was up there ahead of the rest. But the last 10 or so years has shown this as a self deception.

The last Tory administration was mired in sleaze, but it really didn't centre on the actual administration process or overly affect the standing of Parliament, hence we could vote the bad boys out and in with a new ethical bunch. This no longer seems an option, when the "ethical bunch" don't seem very ethical at all.

I am sure that there are many MPs who have very high standards and serve for the honour of serving, but when we see the kind of contempt for the tax payer that is being shown by the highest levels of Government then you begin to wonder where to turn.

Fined for obeying the law

When I started this blog last week I thought I'd use it for business type posts, but why limit myself? Sometimes you need to get stuff off your chest.

Today I was moving some bookshelves and cabinets out of my office. Sunday is good - drive into London is pretty smooth, no congestion charge and so on. Arrived at the office and someone had parked in the loading bay outside and there were no other parking spaces except for a disabled one. So I drove around the block (well, because of roadworks this was a bit more than a block) and when I got back there was a space in a loading bay - clearly marked as such - a little further down the street. Not too inconvenient, but about 30 yards from the office.

I put a note in the car window and started moving my stuff. After several trips, I was making the last run. I left the office with an armful of bookshelves and there, standing by the car was a traffic warden and there was the penalty notice on the windscreen. I asked him why he had given it and he said that they had to see you loading. Well, a note was on the windscreen and the back of the car had a few pieces of office furniture in it. I said "but you can see me loading", and he said "but you weren't when I arrived".

Pardon me, but the definition of loading implies that yo have to go and get some things to load, so it suggests that you might be away from the car while you do that. In fact the round trip to the office and back was probably less than 5 minutes. I guess he is on commission.

I know I can appeal (more time spent) and I don't expect traffic wardens not too book people, but there should be something in the rules about the application of common sense. It seems that in officialdom these days this is positively discouraged. They seem to forget that they are working for us .... I think it all started to go wrong when councils started to refer to us as customers. Customer care is one thing, but the relationship is very different - they are employed as our representatives to undertake activities that we have decided are better done as a community and not individually. The approach of councils, in my limited experience, is to alienate the people that employ them to serve the community.

[moved from my other blog]