MPs and their ruddy expenses...Are we surprised?

[MrsMerryHenry]

Whoever heard of a squeaky-clean politico?

Michael Martin is absolutely shocking isn't he. My MP is Kate Hoey. I love her.

It is almost hysterically and awfully funny that Conservative MPs have been using their allowances to clean out their moasts for gods sake

What I find most surprising is the comment from/about David Cameron "Sources say leader David Cameron is appalled by some of the allegations that have emerged and is considering taking disciplinary action against those involved."

Kind of like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. He should have been aware of this before. In fact, he can't possibly have been unaware of it because there is no way it wasn't going on when he was claiming expenses as an ordinary MP.

saw Nick Clegg on TV saying MPs should be barred from buying property and he'd been saying this for weeks. Show me an MP who has been saying things for years and I might listen to them.

The moat story has been denied "Hogg denied that he had made a claim for his moat to be cleaned. He said he claimed for a housekeeper, but he had never asked to be reimbursed for the cost of cleaning the moat specifically ? it was simply mentioned in details of expenditure on his house." So he expects people to believe that he didn't know he'd been paid for it? And he thinks claiming a housekeeper is perfectfully acceptable?

I am not surprised about the Tory claims - have met enough Tory MPs to know that they regard themselves as above mere mortals and many have very little morality. I would be surprised if one or two of them were involved although one I thought did have some honour voted in favour of not publishing expenses. Haven't met many Labour or Lib Dem MPs but when you hear of MPs getting their housekeeper paid for I guess you'd feel your broken toilet seat was not too much to ask.

lol at the £320 claim for horse manure. A claim for bullshit I could understand, they get through enough of that in the course of their working day.

I agree with smallwhitecat, and disagree with morningpaper. I think 60k is a good and reasonable salary.
gree with 'we were just following orders' comment. We all know what they have done is wrong. They know it too. Who authorises their expenses then. They too are accountable. Or should be held...
I am not surprised by all of this. Saddened but not surprised.
If they worked in a business and were found to be fiddling expenses they would be sacked. Not just agree to pay it back. How soft is that ?
Makes me mad. Really really mad. I tell you .....

I'm getting mnore depressed about this. Did anyone else watch Question Time last night. The panellist who was consistently cheered was the chief exec of McDonalds, which does raise the prospect of Ross Perot politics.

I think the Elliot Morley stuff is very serious, it's fraud and if he isn't prosecuted then I think people will stay angry.

Ross perot politics. That's a very interesting and depresssing comparison. The idea that people garner the popularity needed to get elected by representing themselves as virtuous outsiders and tapping in to a widespread dislike and mistruct of 'politicians in the system'.

So politics is undertaken on the assumption that politics and politicians are bad.

It is an unsurprising development. Going in to politics used to be about having a firm set of beliefs about policy, based on a distinctive political philosophy. Now the parties have no manifesto, no distinctive agenda. They are managers, competing to be seen as the most effective management team; to be seen as the team that best gives us whatever we happen to want (or be manipulated into thinking we want) at a given moment.

Why does anyone want to become a politician in that climate? The principled people are all going into interest-group politics, not party politics. You have to question why anyone becomes an MP these days. A power kick? Vanity? Not the sort of motives that protenct against corruption.