This thread is slightly bogus as it is trying to keep boiling an issue done to death, surely, already, and is hardly adding much new. "its the female voters who feel so incensed and insulted by the Keens' expenses saga" - judging by the posts on this Forum, by no means so, it seems, as most of the posts seem to be by men, mostly of the politically-motivated varietyIt's a pity that the figures in the opening thread include the staffing costs, as it is not - so far - those amounts (with certain exceptions) that have attracted attention, but the remainder.I'm not writing to defend or attack the expenses of this or any other MP. I just think it must by now be common ground that the system needs wholesale reform so that in future the salary encompasses practically all that an MP should need to claim. The possible exceptions are:- (a) a defined number of journeys - say 40 journeys a year - between a home in or near a constituency outside Greater London and Parliament;(b) the rental cost, not including utilities or other costs and possibly not including council tax, but not any mortgage costs of a second home either in or near the constituency if the main home is in Greater London, or vice versa if the main home is in or near the constituency, provided that the landlord must not be related to or otherwise connected to the MP (that would exclude political parties for example, and business associates);(c) costs of overseas travel, not including own food/drink, when on visits in connection with authorised fact-finding or representational visits to other countries - some set of rules would have to be devised to stop these being "jollies", not that a visit to the West Bank, or Dharfur is much of a jolly;(d) the salary costs of MP staff should be handled by the Fees Office provided the staffer is unconnected personally to the MP, save by Party membership (which doesn't have to be a requirement - in my mother's day as an MP's secretary, it wasn't either a requirement or customary, many secretaries being pretty unpolitical);(e) if all other office costs were borne by the MP personally, that might instill some concept of economy in them, and I would not object to a compensating adjustment to salary. The problem on MP expenses is that the tighter they are controlled, the more advantage it confers on the MP who has deep pockets (not that this constrained wealthy MPs from abusing the existing system)In the context of transferring expenses from a claim-and-refund system to one where for the most part the MP pays them himself/herself, I can see a case for a decent pay rise, 15% or maybe more, as has recently been proposed, but I would think that in all decency it should only be implemented after the General Election and the way the offices of MPs are funded made more public so that the public doesn't harp on about MPs on salaries of say £90k in ignorance. It is a bit strange that a local council leader can have allowances of approaching £40k, and their expenses running into thousands, including 1/3 of £13,000 on a trip to Cannes, for an activity that is supposedly voluntary public service, but get minimal public obloquoy for this, when MPs of all persuasions are now in total disrepute.The background given by Robin Taylor to Councillor Phil Andrews' on-going spat with Ann Keen seems perfectly credible to me, but it doesn't take a dispute over accommodation for National Front meetings to make an NF-er hostile to a Labour MP or candidate - anything will do for them!
Dan Filson ● 6186d