David Laws' expenses

[longfingernailspaintedblue]

I really thought he was the very best of the Lib Dems.

Given his fortune he obviously doesn't need the expenses, but hiding his landlord/partner from the authorities is unacceptable, even if it was to hide his sexuality.

I'm completely shellshocked.

well, they've got Floella Benjamin... sadly also Ian Blair, that nice man who smeared Jean Charles de Menezes. Not enough for his incompetent officers to kill an innocent man, he had to lie and lie and lie again in a pathetic attempt to cover up. And that class warrior Prezza gets a seat too. How nice for Pauline.

Claig, I think you are going rather OTT with your conspiracy theories. No-one fights an election hoping to lose. Labour knew they would lose but not deliberately! And they couldn't control the Tory vote, for heaven's sake.

yes they shouldn't be able to appoint them. Each community should vote for local teachers or public servants who really serve us, not any of these bigwigs.

I am a bit disappointed that he hasn't resigned.

I wonder if Cameron even has the power to sack him? Or does Clegg decide on who the Lib Dem Cabinet members are?

well edam I think Laws's situation must have been common knowledge in political circles, I don't believe his claims that he managed to keep it secret. I think we will find out over the coming weeks that he has been lying. If Labour wanted to win, then some of this could have been released to the Mirror or even on political blogs on the web. It would have finished the LibDems. Let's wait and see if we find out who exposed Laws. If it was Labour then it gives food for thought. I think politics is stranger than fiction. I think McCain and Palin intended to lose. McCain was hated by most of the republican party, he was the wrong choice by far, as many republican commentators have maintained. Palin was a laughing stock and even played along with it, talking about seeing Russia from her window in Alaska.

The taxpayer has benefited from this, as BeenBeta said. If he'd seen Lundie as a spousal partner and claimed for a joint mortgage, as he could have done, the cost to the taxpayer would have been more. Now he's paid 40K that he didn't in fact have to. Good man.

I don't get what he did wrong.

He claimed for expenses to rent a room for a property that belonged to his partner.

interesting Prolesworth. His family don't really count. It is the powerful MPs and power brokers who all knew it. They could hold him hostage at any time with the sword of Damocles above his head. People must have known that he was breaking the rules, therefore he was not a free man. Rumours could easily have spread like wild fire, forcing the light to be shined more closely on Laws.

vesela

I suspect your party loyalty is trumping your good sense.

His defence is that his "partner" of several years isn't his "partner" because they had different bank accounts. That alone speaks volumes.

In many ways his rent claims seem to be in the spirit of the rules, if not the letter - the opposite of many of last year's scandals.

But he also has the mysterious claims for utility and maintenance bills which disappeared after he needed to hand in receipts.

we should really all reread Jonathan Swift. He had seen all of these characters before, the type that can convincingly pull the wool over our eyes arguing that black is white and white is black. There is nothing new under the sun, politics has always been thus, and human nature doesn't change.

Prolesworth - I would too (if they were Tory or Labour). I wasn't active during the expenses scandals, but I think some people were unjustly targeted during it.

LFPB - but it's not up to us how he defines his boyfriend, even if they were together for eight years (I get the idea they split up in August? could be wrong about that)

It looks as though Laws was motivated by hiding his sexuality. If he had normalised his affairs he might have been able to structure things so that he could claim more.

Politics aside, I feel sorry about the human tragedy and that he didn't feel that it was "safe" for him to be open about his sexuality.

"If only we had some ordinary people with morals in power"

Claig I fear there is an oxymoron in there somewhere.

I am all for more people from normal backgrounds in power. But they must be there on merit - i.e Intelligent as well as principled. And given our state education's aversion to intellectual elitism the pickings are now pretty poor (see Labours current leadership line up).

Leningrad - what did he flout? he classified a long-running boyfriend as one type of partner rather than another. With both types of partner, he could have made an expenses claim that in the case of a spousal partner could have in all probablity been higher.

As to whether he needed the money - MPs' allowances aren't means-tested, and as someone said upthread, there are reasons forthat. You can argue that they should be - fine - but not cast stones under the present system.

jackstarbright, I am starting to prefer the common sense of the ordinary person to the shenanigans of the public school educated elite with their supposedly high IQs. They are not born with a silver spoon in their mouths, don't have this superior sense of entitlement, and have empathy for ordinary people. But that's precisely why they never get into power.

At what point was what he did unacceptable? Yes, it's probably dishonest, but afaik the expenses form does not ask, 'are you having sexual relations with the landlord...'

It sounds as if it wasn't a committed relationship as my understanding is that even their close friends didn't know they were a 'couple.'