The Second Home Allowance for MPs

 Politics  No Responses »
May 102009
 

British MPs have managed to make themselves look corrupt in a spectacular way with the leaking of the details of purchases made on the second home allowance. It is particularly amusing that the biggest fuss is about somewhat trivial items such as loo brushes (that’s not a real example) and the like.

It is worth pointing out that the whole second homes allowance was introduced by the Tories in the 1980s to supplement MPs salaries during a time when Thatcher was grinding away at public sector salary increases. So this is not strictly speaking a Labour issue.

There have been a number of excuses floating around as to why MPs need a second homes allowance, and because MPs are so good at spinning rubbish it is easy to start to think that they may have a point. But lets compare things with not just the private sector but everyone else …

Normally when you take a job, you are expected to live within a reasonable distance of work. It’s not usually explicitly stated but you are expected to turn up to work every morning at a reasonable time, and stay for a reasonable length of time. Whilst you may get a more or less generous “bonus” to making moving easier, you don’t get money to pay for a home near work.

So MPs might have a point about a second home allowance but until such an allowance becomes common place outside of Westminster, they are going to look like pigs in the trough if they do have one. Under the existing system it does make sense to make some sort of arrangement for providing accommodation to MPs whose constituency is some distance from London.

But that can simply be provided by a block of flats close to Westminster – perhaps something on the river.

If MPs had sorted this all out before all this fuss, it would have been quite reasonable to abolish the second home allowance, spread the money used for it previously amongst the MPs as a salary increase. But because this was not sorted out previously the MPs should lose the money completely.

It would seem that many of the items coming to light are strictly speaking “within the rules”, but that is not good enough. We have to trust MPs to be honest and honourable as they make the rules that govern us. If they are apparently eager to exploit a system that is not quite as rigorous as it should be, what is to blame ? The MPs of course.

In any position of power, there are ways of abusing that power. It is the responsibility of those with power to not abuse that position. Can we trust MPs not to abuse their position ? Apparently not; at least not those MPs who have abused the system. Parliament needs to identify the 10 worst offenders and expel them for a minimum of 5 years.

Or if they do not have the courage to do this, perhaps we should identify the top 50 most serious offenders and refuse to re-elect them at the next election.

One of the dangers of so much concentration on the second homes allowance is that we are in danger of overlooking worse things. For instance, why are MPs allowed to take on jobs in addition to their job in Parliament?

In many situations (at least in the public sector), if you are in any sense in a senior position, you are effectively prohibited from taking additional jobs. At least without getting permission to do so. In the case of MPs, I see no reason why they should be allowed to have additional jobs – they already have an important and well paid job and any other job will take them away from what they are supposed to be doing.

There’s a tired out old excuse that MPs like to trot out whenever the second jobs question gets asked – that they need second jobs to keep in touch with the outside world. It is really an excuse to rake in fat cat salaries – after all how many MPs with second jobs work as nurses in hospitals ? Or anything that does not pay ridiculous amounts of money for trivial amounts of work.

Time to refuse to elect part-time MPs.

Police Actions At The G20 Protests

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Apr 152009
 

Now that there has been time for things to surface and time to reflect, we can see that whilst the majority of the police were well behaved and went about their business responsibly, but as might be expected a lunatic fringe tried to spoil things by going too far …

  1. Battering a passer by to the ground because a man walking away from you with his hands in his pockets is just so threatening. Ian Tomlinson was merely on his way home from work when this happened and died from a heart attack a few minutes later around the corner. See the video:
  2. Giving a woman a back-hander and then using a truncheon against the back of her legs, just because she’s a little in your face. Normally someone who behaves like this towards a woman is condemned for their actions, but it’s perfectly ok if you are the Police and she’s a protestor :
  3. If you look closely at the video above you will notice that the policeman battering that protester has no identifying numbers on his shoulder. British police are supposed to have identification to stop the anonymous brutality that occurs in police states, but perhaps we are living in one ?

If you look around YouTube, you may well find other examples that make it appear that the police were heavy handed against the protesters. For example :

I’ve seen quite a few video clips of violent protesters over the years – frequently at G20 (or similar) events, and the protesters in this clip don’t look particularly violent to me. I am not saying there wasn’t stuff going on that isn’t coming across too well in the video, but the police response to me looks excessive.

The death of Ian Tomlinson shows why everybody should be concerned with the possibility of police brutality at such protests – it is easy for people to be caught up in these events who have nothing whatsoever to do with the protest. And the police need to be constantly reminded that the protesters have the right to be there, and the right to protest.

And as to how that policeman was allowed to go out without identification, well that should be regarded as the equivalent of a burgular going out “tooled up” for a job … he was prepared to go out and indulge in levels of violence extreme enough that he felt he needed to protect his identity. Who allowed him to go out on the streets in the first place ?

Today it was announced that there will be a review of the police tactics used for dealing with demonstrations. That may well be a good idea, but what would be more helpful is a review of every policeman’s attitude to demonstrators.

The Golliwog

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Feb 062009
 

Firstly I should point out this has nothing to do with Carol Thatcher’s use of the term or indeed a considerably less recent incident where Naomi Campbell was supposedly called one. It just so happened that the former has triggered the memory of a ‘story’ that I wanted to write.

Secondly this is not some kind of attempt to claim those who feel that the word (and the toy) is racists are wrong. If someone feels the use is racist that is a good enough reason to get rid of gollywogs. Besides which judging from the Wikipedia article on Gollywogs, most of the gollywog toys were pretty damn scary – too scary to be given to children anyway.

Way back in the distant past I would sometimes play with a gollywog hand puppet that my grandparents had in their house. Perhaps I was dumb (I was after all less than 10 at the time) but I always thought it was some kind of cartoon character or something. I certainly did not make an association between it and any kind of human; the toy I played with was definitely not that human!

Later at school when racist words crept in (at the some time I started getting called “four-eyes” and “lanky”), I do not recall the word “gollywog” being used to refer to anyone.

So back when I first heard about gollywogs being banned for being rascist (probably something to do with a certain jam), I practically fell off my chair in surprise. Did anyone seriously believe that there was any similarity between gollywogs and black people ?

I can distantly remember the “Golly” logo being used on certain jars of jam (“jelly” to any Americans tuning in), but again it never seemed to me to be anything other than some sort of cartoon character from the distant past. It also did not seem to bring to mind black people in any form.

Perhaps this was a case of people reading about the history of the word, and jumping to conclusions of how and why it was being used ? Taking offense at something that was not at the time intended to be used as a racist term ?

It would also explain why gollywog has apparently now become a term used by racists. I remain to be convinced that it was so used in the past … I do not remember it being used, and there are far more hateful words that were thrown around back then.

Of course having read up on it a little bit I now know that the origins were racist, but a word and an image that has originally racist origins can end up being used innocently. For example “Welsh” used to mean “foreigner” thus “Wales” meant “the land of the foreigner”, complete with a racist undercurrent. Now “Wales” is merely the name of a country we should really be calling “Cymru” (even if I’m not sure how to pronounce it).

On a side note, why do we have to use “black people” to use to refer to people whose African ancestors were rather more recent than others ? It seems rather insulting (to either “white” or “black”) to categorise any person by the colour of the dead stuff that keeps the squishy bits in. And it is not even particularly accurate. “Chocolate” would work so much better and be more inclusive – my skin is white chocolate, hers is milk chocolate, and his is dark chocolate.

Businesses Running To The Government In The Depression

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Jan 292009
 

When the economy is well, we constantly hear from businesses about how government should not interfere with business; that anything the private sector does is sacred, and the public sector is at best pathetic. They complain the most about regulation but government support for problematic businesses frequently comes up to. And of course whinge constantly about taxation on business.

Of course any business that needs support from the government to survive is pathetic and probably should fail.

But wait! Come this recession, we are seeing speaking heads from businesses in droves demanding that the government bail their business out. Somehow because there is a recession on, all the traditional rules can be ignored and businesses need support from government.

Sure perhaps we do need to use public money to help out businesses that would otherwise fail. After all reverting to 19th century economics like the Conservatives seems to have done is likely to be far worse. But that does not mean they should get a free ride – we should remind them that businesses usually ask to be left alone, and that goes two ways.

And of course put up taxes on businesses a tad, to pay back the money over the long term. And every time a business complains about high taxes, remind them of these times when government was spending money to help businesses out.

NI: “Compensation” For The Families Hit In The Troubles

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Jan 282009
 

Today the conflict in Northern Ireland has appeared in the news again. Fortunately this time the conflict was no more than angry words, but it shows that the “troubles” are not quite over yet. The news that sparked this conflict? The announcement that all the families who lost a member during the troubles would receive £12,000 as some sort of gesture (they avoid the word “compensation”).

The problem with this is that this package includes those families who lost a member who was a terrorist “killed in action” as it were – for example the family of an IRA bomber killed by his own bomb would receive this gesture. It is hardly surprising that this is somewhat less than those who feel they are genuine victims of terrorism.

Those who came up with this idea need to have their heads examined. Perhaps their hearts were in the right place, but they should have known that this proposal would never have been popular. The family of that IRA bomber mentioned earlier (and the equivalent families of Unionist terrorists) are victims of terrorism as much as the other families, although I very much doubt I would get much agreement from the other families.

Why?

First of all the family of a terrorist is not responsible for the actions of the terrorist, and they will suffer the normal effects of grief when that terrorist is killed. In a society where that terrorist did not feel the need to go out and murder people to make a point, the family would still have that member of their family.

Does it sound like I am blaming society for turning ordinary angry young men (and women) into terrorists ? Yes to an extent.

A normal healthy society does not turn a significant number of angry young men into terrorists. They may well go on protests, throw bricks through windows, and generally make a nuisance of themselves. They will not go out and plant bombs, and shoot people.

Any society that does turn a significant number of angry young men into terrorists is sick in some way.

That does not mean that the terrorist is innocent of the crimes they commit – anyone who bombs, or shoots in an attempt to achieve a political end is in the wrong.

But any society that is sick needs a tonic.

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