Local Conservative MP, Andrew Selous needs to give very serious thought to explaining how he tops the league table in 2002/3 and 2004/5 for Additional Costs Allowances, with his constituency being only some 35 miles from London.
For over a week the Daily Telegraph has published the outrageous, the ridiculous, the extravagant, the weird, and the downright dishonest, expense claims of our MPs. To the punter in the street they all seem to have been "at it", regardless of party, at some point. Only a handful appear to come squeaky clean.
But doesn't it just show that our MPs are "only human"? I mean, the highway code says the speed limit on our motorways is 70mph. But as one speeds past you when you're on 70mph, just look how many others follow suit. One gets away with it, and plenty more think they'll try it on too. Stick average speed cameras on the route, and just look how they all slow!
I say that what parliament needs is a better system to police those claims. Government owned apartments for MPs who need to travel a fair distance to work. For those who prefer to travel in, perhaps a mileage allowance, but only on those days they need to travel in. As for Kit-Kats, hob knob biscuits, flower pots, and the like, they should buy their own. As for profits on 2nd homes (that's 2nd, not 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th!), pay it back to parliament; and if you are judged by your peers to have deliberately, systematically, "milked the system" over recent years, RESIGN!
Footnote: Just as Rita Egan says, as a local councillor I have never submitted any expenses, or even claimed petrol for 2 distance trips I took last year, or for a day unpaid off work I had to take to attend a training course on the new planning system.
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