The Liberal Democrats have begun examining the failure of their vaunted “decapitation strategy” to deliver the Tory scalps that the party had predicted.
The Liberal Democrats have begun examining the failure of their vaunted “decapitation strategy” to deliver the Tory scalps that the party had predicted.
Maybe we were trying for the Wrong Party, if at first you don’t succeed, get somone to do it right
Lots of questions to answer John?
You must be thinking ahead what are they doing, are they working together? what happens if the MPs scandal rubs of on to the voters.Lots of equations to work out. Did pendlebury offer hope? or was it a sure thing. what happens if the Liberals and Tories push out the Boat and mount real campaigns, we had that disaster in Pendlebury but it will not happen again. As long as we poll well we have a platform to build, Some of our members campaign buy the book but in Irwell Riverside i think you will see it was different Steve doing it the right way and dipping his toe in well, lets see how it pans out.
Regards
Don’t think so do you!!
Much has been said over the last week about MP’s abusing the their expenses. I have however reserved judgment on my local MP Hazel Blears, until the full details became/were made public.
Sadly, though being physically tiny, but tall in character, it has become abundantly clear that she has been squeezed between the daily telegraph acting as judge jury and executioner, and number 10 seeking to settle scores with its own side.
Why do I say this you may ask, after all not only am I not a Labour supporter, nor have I or would I vote for her. Just having watched her over the last few years, being a principled and a moral MP, and I had full faith before the full details became apparent, that nothing improper would come out about Hazel. It may not have been wise what she did, but it was not improper, and certainly not illegal. Lets see Gordon pay back his £6000 cleaning bill. It’s a mark of the women that she was of the first willing to pay it back when others kept their hands firmly in their own pockets.
Hazel Blears may be a socialist, and I do hold that against her, but she is a decent, hard working, honest and upstanding public servant who deserves our support.
Just like we get the representatives we vote for, if we hound out good people like her, the next generation of politicians could be far worse. We already have a democratic deficit, let as not make it worse. By all means we must right wrongs, and weed out the corrupt, but lets mend what is still one of the worlds best systems,
Comment you say it’s the mark of the Women willing to pay it back, well all i can say is It’s more like sod it..
have been caught.
Sorry Mr Odze,
Every door i went to i got.
I hope you are not bloody Labour!!!!!!
So Hazel or any other MP who reads this Blog it’s easy. You get paid to do a job and no you should not be out of pocket. But don’t extract the urine out of the good people of this city. We are struggling to live, and we don’t take kindley to people who lack any
form of morals. In my opionion you and your fellow MP’S have lost touch with the real world.
Morality (from the Latin moralitas “manner, character, proper behavior”) has three principal meanings.
In its first, descriptive usage, morality means a cod
e of conduct which is held to be authoritative in matters of right and wrong. Morals are created by and define society, philosophy, religion, or individual conscience. An example of the descriptive usage could be “common conceptions of morality have changed significantly over time.”
In its second, normative and universal sense, morality refers to an ideal code of conduct, one which would be espoused in preference to alternatives by all rational people, under specified conditions. In this “prescriptive” sense of morality as opposed to the above described “descriptive” sort of sense, moral value judgments such as “murder is immoral” are made. To deny ‘morality’ in this sense is a position known as moral skepticism, in which the existence of objective moral “truths” is rejected.[1]
In its third usage, ‘morality’ is synonymous with ethics, the systematic philosophical study of the moral domain.[2]
Ethics seeks to address questions such as how a moral outcome can be achieved in a specific situation (applied ethics), how moral values should be determined (normative ethics), what morals people actually abide by (descriptive ethics), what the fundamental nature of ethics or morality is, including whether it has any objective justification (meta-ethics), and how moral capacity or moral agency develops and what its nature is (moral psychology).[3] In applied ethics, for example, the prohibition against taking human life is controversial with respect to capital punishment, abortion and wars of invasion. In normative ethics, a typical question might be whether a lie told for the sake of protecting someone from harm is justified. In meta-ethics, a key issue is the meaning of the terms “right” or “wrong”. Moral realism would hold that there are true moral statements which report objective moral facts, whereas moral anti-realism would hold that morality is derived from any one of the norms prevalent in society (cultural relativism); the edicts of a god (divine command theory); is merely an expression of the speakers’ sentiments (emotivism); an implied imperative (prescriptive); falsely presupposes that there are objective moral facts (error theory). Some thinkers hold that there is no correct definition of right behavior, that morality can only be judged with respect to particular situations, within the standards of particular belief systems and socio-historical contexts. This position, known as moral relativism, often cites empirical evidence from anthropology as evidence to support its claims.[4] The opposite view, that there are universal, eternal moral truths are known as moral absolutism. Moral absolutists might concede that forces of social conformity significantly shape moral decisions, but deny that cultural norms and customs define morally right behavior.
Public anger grows as more ‘embarrassing’ expenses claims revealed
Another clutch of embarrassing parliamentary expenses claims were revealed today as the public mood over the revelations turned increasingly angry.
Justice Minister Shahid Malik claimed for tens of thousands of pounds on his second home in London while renting his constituency home in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, for less than £100 a week, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Former Cabinet member Clare Short was also paid £8,000 too much after claiming for her full mortgage payments despite only being entitled to the interest, it was revealed.
And there were revelations about a number of MP couples, including Cabinet colleagues Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper who reportedly “flipped” their second home to three different properties within two years, and Ann and Alan Keen, who have allegedly claimed almost £40,000 a year on a central London flat less than 10 miles from their family home.
The details were published amid mounting pressure for police action against the worst alleged abuses and after the continuing scandal claimed its first MP scalps.
One opinion poll today also showed Labour had slumped to its lowest rating of 22%, handing the Conservatives a landslide victory if translated into votes at the next general election,
Mr Malik’s claims for his second home in Peckham, south London, amounted to £66,827 over three years, the highest figure for any MP, according to the Telegraph.
They were said to include £2,600 for a home cinema system – which was cut in half by the Commons Fees Office – £730 for a “massage chair”, and £65 for a court summons for the non-payment of council tax.
The Telegraph said that his landlord, local businessman and landlord Tahir Zaman, confirmed that he was paying well below the market rent for his Dewsbury address.
Mr Malik insisted last night that he had acted within the rules and denied that his job was on the line.
He declined to discuss the Telegraph’s claim that he was renting a house in Dewsbury at below market value, saying: “That is my private business.”
He added: “I spend half the week in Dewsbury and half the week in London and claim on my second home in London. I have not broken any rules.”
Later he told Sky News: “I think this is a bit of a non-story to be honest.
“This isn’t £16,000 I’ve had to pay back, it’s not £8,000 extras I’ve claimed, its not that I’ve claimed as a couple for an extra house – none of that nonsense.”
Mr Zaman told the Telegraph: “(Mr Malik) is definitely paying well under the market value rent. I’m renting (out) the next-door (property), (it’s) half the size of his property, they pay me more rent than what he’s paying me.”
Ms Short – who now sits as an independent, having quit the Government in 2003 over the Iraq war – was said to have claimed the full cost of her mortgage for two and a half years despite being entitled to charge only for the interest.
She paid back the money after the error was pointed out by the Commons Fees Office in 2006, but only after complaining that they should have spotted the mistake earlier.
The MP for Birmingham Ladywood said that it had been an “honest mistake” made when she switched from an interest-only to a repayment mortgage on her constituency home after she left the Government.
“This is years ago. So the system worked. I made a mistake, the money was repaid, there is no fiddle of any kind, no milking the system,” she told the BBC News channel.
Yesterday former environment minister Elliot Morley was suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party after it was revealed he claimed £16,000 of taxpayers’ money for a non-existent mortgage.
And Tory backbencher Andrew MacKay resigned as an aide to Tory leader David Cameron after confirming he claimed for a second home allowance while his wife, Tory MP Julie Kirkbride, claimed it for another property.
Windows at the front of Ms Kirkbride’s offices in Worcestershire were smashed yesterday as public anger appeared to boil over.
And MPs including Sir Menzies Campbell and Margaret Beckett appearing on BBC’s weekly Question Time debate last night were jeered and heckled as they attempted to explain their claims.
London mayor Boris Johnson, who is chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority, said there could be grounds for bringing police in to investigate some claims.
He said: “I think, frankly, looking at some of these cases it looks to me as though Plod needs to come in.
“I must be careful what I say here because I am chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority, but it looks to me as though some people may very well have a serious case to answer.”
Campaign group the TaxPayers’ Alliance has submitted a formal complaint to police over Mr Morley’s expenses and warned it would consider a private prosecution if the authorities failed to bring him to court.
TPA chief executive Matthew Elliott said: “This is too serious an issue to ignore, and it is too harmful to our democracy to pretend that it can all be dispelled by waving apology cheques or claiming lapses of memory.
“If any of Mr Morley’s constituents behaved as he has with their employer’s money or with the taxman, they would be in extremely hot water – those same rules must apply to MPs.”
A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “We have received and are currently considering a number of complaints in relation to alleged misuse of expenses, but no decision has been taken on whether to investigate.”
Former Tory Cabinet minister Douglas Hogg also agreed to repay £2,200 for clearing a moat at his Lincolnshire country home after accepting that it was “not positively excluded” from his expenses claim.
The Sun published the results of a YouGov poll, which showed the Conservatives on 41%, Labour on 22% and the Lib Dems on 21%.
Translated into seats at election time, that would give the Tories a 152-seat majority, the paper said, with the likes of Chancellor Alistair Darling and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith losing their seats.
Mr Malik was inside his Dewsbury home this morning.
The house is part of converted outbuildings next to a derelict manor house on the edge of the town.
The property, which has the date 1685 on the lintel above the door, can only be accessed down a private road off the main Heckmondwike Road.
The converted block stands by itself on land opposite the Dewsbury Moor council estate, which hit the headlines last year following the disappearance of schoolgirl Shannon Matthews.
Mr Malik claimed that much of the reporting about his expenses claims was “absolute nonsense”.
Speaking from Dewsbury, he insisted he was “as straight as they come” and said nearly every other MP in the country had spent the same amount as him.
But he pledged to donate £1,050 he claimed for a television to worthy local causes in his constituency.
He told Sky News: “I will not be giving it to the authorities in Parliament because it is legitimately mine.
“But as a gesture I am giving that to good causes in my constituency, and I think it will be appreciated by those who receive it.”
Mr Malik alleged that the focus on his expenses was politically motivated.
He told Sky News: “You are running with the Conservatives’ agenda, and obviously the way that they have played this has been more detrimental to Labour than to anybody else.”
London mayor Boris Johnson put his own slant on the expenses scandal today at the start of work on the £16 billion Crossrail scheme, which will involve tunnelling under the capital.
Accompanied by Gordon Brown, Mr Johnson, in a speech to guests at the opening, said he wanted to send a clear message to all politicians and it would be a message which reversed the normal state of affairs.
Mr Johnson said: “Gordon, you may think you are in a hole, but, when you are in a hole as big as Crossrail, it is absolutely vital to keep digging.”
