Nadine Dorries: This is a witch hunt – the torture must end
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Independent Minds
No Prime Minister has ever had the political courage to award MPs a level of pay commensurate with their experience, qualifications and position, despite recommendations year after year from the Senior Salary Review Body.
Prior to my intake in 2005, MPs were sat down and told that the Additional Cost Allowance was an allowance, not expenses; it was the MPs' property, in lieu of pay; and the job of the Fees Office was to help them claim it. This was the system because every Prime Minister, including my heroine, dropped the political hot potato.
At a drinks party the other night, I put it to the YouGov founder Stephan Shakespeare that MPs prior to my intake had been told for many years that the ACA was in lieu of pay. "Yes, we have all known that," said Stephan. "The question is how do you move forward, what will be put in its place?"
When Stephan said "we all", what he meant was the political and media establishment. The BBC knew it. Every journalist knew it. The Today programme presenter who interviewed me knew it; and Martin Bell probably knew it because he was given the rule book when he became an MP 12 years ago.
If MPs prior to 2005 were sat down and told, "This is your pot, sat on a shelf in the Fees Office, and our job is to make sure you have it as it's part of your salary because no one here since the time of Cromwell has had the guts to address MPs' remuneration", you can't blame the older MPs for not giving due diligence to what it was spent on. The system was an utter disgrace, but it was the system.
The Telegraph's technique of picking off a few MPs each day, emailing at noon, giving five hours to reply, recording the conversation, not allowing them to speak, telling them they are going to publish anyway, amounts, at day 15, to a form of torture and may have serious consequences. No can deny the right to expose this, but any decent human being can question pushing individuals to the brink of despair.
The Telegraph conflates serious acts of fraud with the mildly embarrassing and plain administrative errors. No MP will escape the inquisition. All MPs wait with knots in their stomach every day. A sense of relief washes over when it's not you with the fatal midday email. But then comes sickness, as the next 24-hour wait begins.
MPs are human beings. They have families. Mums married to MPs must still go to the supermarket or school gate, often with the husband hundreds of miles away. Their children are scared. McCarthyite witch hunts belong to the past. As do archaic, cowardly methods of pay.
If MPs are judged wanting, so are those who knew the system was in place, including the Telegraph journalists.
Nadine Dorries is Conservative MP for Mid-Bedfordshire
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Comments
You will find more extreme right wing bloggers and journos on the Dully Tele than at a bear baiting.
Even their religious correspondent Damian Thompson endorses obscene posts and regards all muslims as islamo-fascist untermenschen.
Yet when the usually appalling Nadine Dorries posted there to point out that much of the current furore re the ways MPs have augmented their salaries with allowances / expenses her effort was deleted.
The Indie has hosted it as we see.
That is the trouble Nadine. That is why people are so angry. It is both the fact of the fiddling and the jaw-dropping conceptions of what is 'reasonable' AND the fact that MPs of all hues have spent decades clamping down on ordinary workers and criminalizing poor people who survive by doing a bit on the side here and there.
Now you are all waiting for the e-mail. So where has your party stood on hounding the 'benefit cheats' - or on exhorting the rest of us to grass them up? What has your position been on the inexorable rise in the prison population over the last four decades - and don't pretend that the prisons are full of 'real' criminals. unlike yourselves. Thousands are inside because they made mistakes, screwed up, tried to take a shortcut etc. Why should we have any sympathy for you all when it is now your own cheating and fraud that is suddenly about to be exposed.
Both major parties have consistently dismissed criticism of the surveillance and punishment society that they have spawned with the mantra - 'if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear'. So what is it that MPs are worried about?
Of course the media are appalling. Of course it may be desperate for many individuals who don't deserve it. But that is the game you have all been playing with real people for years. It is no bad thing for MPs to experience what they and their media allies/enemies have, for so long unleashed on others.
Thank you for putting it so calmly and clearly.
Nadine, take note!
They said that this expenses system had been in place since the 1960's and you said 'we all knew about it - including the media'. So we let you get away with it for 50 years. However, since 1997, you (MPs and Government) have exploited us, the taxpayer and started a war on our individual liberty, our individual rights and our privacy in complete contravention of what we want. So it is only fair and proper you lose all your earlier 'rights' of your allowances/expenses and all your rights to privacy.
And no, the torture must not end, because all of you still do not get it. This is the only way you will 'get it'.
Thank you for stating the simple truth.
MPs are paid perfectly well as it is. All an MP is worth is what the constituents think they are worth. If they want more, they must find a job that will pay them more.
So forget the excuses, stop whingeing, Ms Dorries, You've all been caught out. You MPs kept the System secret and wanted us not to know you what you were about. You owe the Revenue huge sums of tax for benefits in kind. Then you need to repay what you grabbed in benefits in kind seeing we taxpayers didn't authorise these payments to you so you should not have been given them.
Comment
No. I do not want to fight you when you are on the broom. You win. That okay with you.
I thank you
Firozali A.Mulla
The Dully Tele has done that, and loads of their followers too . .
Try: http://quietzapples.blogspot.com/ for some more info on the Dully Tele's campaign of abusive libels & etc . . .
and http://snowflake5.blogspot.com/ for the view of someone as scandalised as most of you, but with a more realistic approach, and good moderated debates on the matter.
If MPs were people of high integrity, wisdom, intellect and calibre then I doubt people would be so upset about their remuneration and expenses. Unfortunately too many MPs are next to useless.
Even were your silly assumption about Mps true:
1 The responsibilities and work are phenomenal
2 They do "represent" - some of us choose them for qualities which we imagine (rightly or wrongly) are qualities we think valuable, whether they suit wannabe smartarses, or not.
Shame the electorate did not know about your 'Secret club" , a nod and a wink on your secret salary . Of course nothing dishonest in misleading the electorate on your pay and benefits , who are you trying to kid ? Hope ar ewilling to take this stand in the next election as you wont have to worry about this problem after it . YOU just dont get it !
Lol.
Juts a cheap jibe - eh?
She may be nutty on various issues, but I would be surprised if she and others were not phoning those who don't show when expected & etc.
Curious that MPs have become the untermenschen in the distorted minds of those whom the Dully Tele has turned.
Just go! the lot of you, anyone caught exploiting the system, 'out' As we can't trust the political parties to sort this mess out, a National Government of 'Angels' with a maximum two year life, to purge and cleanse the 'Demons' without, 'fear or favour'
Don't think you'd be an, 'Angel' Nadine.
No, Ms Dorries. Because for many, that would require a considerable pay CUT.
Unthinkable!
Luckily for you, no doubt your experience and qualifications will land you a terrifically well-paid job next year when you're made redundant from your current position. (Don't suppose you'd consider making it a bit sooner?)
That would be about 25k a year then. I know junior engineering managers on 30k a year who work harder than, are more intelligent than, are generally more able that any of the bunch of grubby crooks at Westminster.
The serious job of 'running' the UK is done by the Civil Service. All an MP has to do is vote with their party and listen to the problems of the unfortunate people they represent. Oh, it's vital that they attend drinks parties to keep in the gossip loop as well, such an arduous task.
MPs work up to 90 hrs a week, and usually supervise two offices.
And they also now have the responsibility of having to vote on whether GB goes to war should that matter be put.
It is sad that so many have gone to no trouble whatsoever to understand how our country is governed.
You know what Cameron said he thought when he was being told about then . . . errm . . indiscretions?
"Oh No! Not George Osborne again!"
Sometimes life is like that - that's what happens. If you really want to see what's going on in the world and put things into perspective any MP is welcome to come on a few home visits with me and see what good the money they've been sucking out of the system could be doing.
Our country has been bankrupted, we are swamped by uncontrolled immigration, our elected MPs are as corrupt as they are smug and incompetent and this odious woman has the temerity to complain that the public are expressing their outrage.
If you don't like it - resign. Find a real job (if you can) or go and snivel to the Arch-idiot of Canterbury who seems determined to defend the Divine Right of Thieves.
Pot kettle black!!!
They have given massive new powers to the tax man, for example, to enter your property without notice, to arrest you, to get your DNA taken for even the tiniest honest error on your tax return, whilst they vote to exempt themselves from the tax man.
When they make a truly massive 'error' - the only real error being they got caught, they call it an 'administrative' error. Some of them are simply paying back what they think is owed, whereas, we, the public, would have the HMRC add interest and up to 100% of the amount originally owed as penalties. We would have to pay back double.
Nothing this lot since 1997 has been fair. They have continually treated the British public with total contempt.
The widespread feeling that our representatives regard us as naive or stupid is what fuels much of the outrage you are currently experiencing.
Do you believe Mr John Wick is the real whistleblower.
The pathetic excuse of lax security with a hard drive lying about is a cracking joke.
Of course by coincidence Mr Wick came forward, and got deployed shall we say the soon as
some started scratching the oligarch question involvement in the leaks.
Now if you read carefully what the commentators in the DT say, they propose, and advise, and even threaten,
the latest being "Now is the time to obliterate the political class" by Charles Moore.
You combine this with the persistent drip drip of revelations, and can't you see the trend here.
This is pure and screaming blackmail.
And oh boy aren't there strong laws for that!
The DT should be seized and banned from publication of this anymore, and Mr John Wick arrested for conspiracy to blackmail Parliament.
This is a line of prosecution that is as clear as daylight.
As for reforms, they are overdue, and maybe this is a blessing in disguise, and Parliament needs to address as Public wants to, but as we don't bend backwards for terrorists or arsonists, we should not bend backwards for blackmailers!
If you can't do the time, don't do the crime! Simple.
When you were told that the ACA was in lieu of getting a pay rise and it was therefore OK to use it for things that are not strictly necessary for being an MP, was this before or after you stood for election?
You knew the salary when you applied for the job. Your talk of ACA as a supplement is all smoke and mirrors. Enjoy your gold-plated pension.