The crowd is always wrong

One of my abiding memories as a very young child was when I was out with aged parent, about to cross the main road – at a point where there was a central reservation. On that reservation was a lady, herself about to cross the second half of the road. She looked in the direction of the oncoming traffic, saw it was clear and stepped from the safety of the kerb … only to get smacked by a speeding ambulance driving on the wrong side of the road, on its way to an emergency.

I never did know whether she lived, but the ambulance was one of those funny-shaped Austins with a fibreglass body (pictured) – it was a mess, so I guess not.

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Looking after their own

We smiled when we saw the story about Angela Browning paying £9,635 for her personal website. Yet, one London website designer with more than 10 years' experience in the industry said it should cost no more than £1,250 to set up and run. Philip Sweny, of Halpen Marketing, said: "It seems to be a very basic site."

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The truth, the whole truth ...

On the one hand, we have a this … fine, upstanding former soldier, doing his duty by Queen and country, fearlessly exposing a "rotten parliament". On the other, we get a serial bankrupt, leaving behind him unpaid debts, squalid failures, broken promises and the wreckage of a personal life – an opportunist making a quick buck.

That will nearly always be the case. But it should not detract from the importance of the information that was passed, regardless of the motivation of the person(s) who have brought it into the public domain.



My passions about this have been easily roused, because I feel so strongly about the appropriate use of taxpayers' money. I have never deviated from having that focus, whether as a councillor in my town or as a voter when choosing my elected representatives. For my part I gave this matter a great deal thought. But I was satisfied that the furore of having the information coming out in unredacted form was better than having a carefully sanitised and heavily edited version of expense (yes I know this is moot) claims handed down from self satisfied Parliamentary officers.

The real failings here again lay with the media for reporting some aspects out of context. But there have been cases that are clearly fraudulent that have come to the fore to be dealt with. One positive from all this is that people might now look in more detail at how their money is being used - not just by MPs and other representatives, but by whole departments and agencies. We can but hope.

It hasn't occurred to most people that one aspect of 'politics' is reducing government waste at all levels. Trusting the government for any service or Right inevitably ends up with the unaccountable diddling the accounts. Declaring that public money should have public online accounts, and providing the services to interpret them, would leave the public free to go hunting the lunacies and the bureaucrats that gorge on them.

Tony, this is a system that has been in place forty or more years. A culture has built up in parliament where taxpayers' money is seen as an "entitlement" rather than other peoples' money, to be husbanded and protected.

However, the ethos in parliament reflects society as a whole ... and particularly public administration, where the quangocrats, local authority officials, police, civil servants and even senior military officers, all feed at the tit of public money.

The current furore, therefore, solves nothing. The MPs' behaviour is simply a symptom of a broader malaise. There is no recognition of that, and neither is there any reasoned discourse about how to fix that malaise. We will see a rush to apply sticking plasters to "fix" the more egregious problems, and then things will carry on as before.

That is not in dispute Richard. The basic fact is that the culture is wrong and should never have been allowed to develop. The only elements that should be entitlements are salary and compensation for essential spending, recognising that for many MPs a second home is essential. The use of the ACA should never have been allowed to facilitate the building of property portfolios. Perhaps I should have known more about the system before, but like most people the system was remote from me and my attention was on other things.



It does. Again it does not make it acceptable. In order for the culture to be repaired we need top-down culture change, with public officials being held to account and their use of public money being transparent and open to effective scrutiny.



If there is effective reform in our public bodies then the malaise might be addressed. The fixes to the issues of MPs' use of public money cannot be quick, it must be carefully considered and appropriate - and it must be part of wider reform giving power back to the public. Too many MPs, quangocrats and other officials need to learn that they are there to serve, not control. This furore does give us the opportunity to redefine what is expected of them and ensure their conduct comes back within acceptable bounds. Maybe this is a forlorn hope, but it is incumbent on us to try and bring that about.

Agreed, the rot starts at the top ... and must be fixed at the top. All we are being offered, however, is industrial-grade Elastoplast. See:

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... hange.html

Slight technical difficulties which are preventing me putting up new posts on the forum ... so I'm using this one for all new posts until the glitch is fixed.

Odd, that. We have been in the ESSR for about forty years.

Yea, I know, correlation is not causation. But what a coincidence.

off topic.

To the fellow who asked 'Guest' to get a name. I did, I was registered on this site when the umbrella blog was set up. It's just that with a couple of spam attacks and a variety of dos attacks, I think the EU referendum has lost my id.

Regarding the point you make about MPs and their websites, then, yes, you are correct in that they are not getting value for money. I have designed a number of websites for candidates (MarkFormosa.com and EmmaMcClarkin.com - total cost of £250 each) and they do not have to be particularly costly. Furthermore, hosting also costs very little each year. For example, a business package from 1and1 internet costs only £120 a year. This does not need to be paid by a middle-man company, but can be paid by the individual candidate who then retains control of their site. Equally, maintenance costs really are negligible as North Jnr has pointed out. But then, are we surprised? No we are not. Like so much in life, it's not what you know or what you can do, but who you know.

OPM (Other Peoples' Money) has a very strange effect on those entrusted with it. It seems to erode any sense of value and responsibility.

The need to be reminded of the connection between Other Peoples' Money and Other Peoples' Baseball bats!

Oops! New topic problem was me being too clever
Sorted now.

Thank eee

Budget holders have a descending order of care depending on the origin of money and on whose behalf it is spent:

1. One's own money on onself
2. One's own money on others
3. Others' money on oneself
4. Others' money on others

I hope that whoever drafts parliamentary reforms has read C Northcote Parkinson.