And another thing…

So you don’t have a problem with MPs using taxpayers’ money to issue propaganda that can be used to give them an unfair advantage against others in an election?

Oink! Oink! Nice one, Tom!

I don’t understand his point. He says the local party should pay for a coffee morning – should the local party pay for a generic constituency surgery?

http://www.fetlersblog.co.uk/archives/796

Snap!

Communicating with the electorate sounds like a fair-enough use of a communications allowance. I don’t see what the fuss is about.

An AGM eh? Hmmm. Tempted to come along to that. E-mail me Tom if there are any really difficult questions you want asking to which you already have an answer and I’ll be happy to provide that service, chargeable to my usual share of your expenses.

Yeah, agree totally. Desperately searching for more scandal and making the MPs low majority sound like a bad thing. It’s all in the perception of the word “cosy”, isn’t it?

I think we should expect a lot more of this sort of smear job from Dale and co – Tories must be getting rattled as this week has exposed the huge gap in capability between celeb Dave and nerd Gordon. Because, yes, Gordon might be a nerd, but maybe that is what you want as a leader.

Do we really think Dave the celeb would have delivered the G20 deal? He’d have only gone to Chile if he could chill out on one of the yachts owned by Norm’s mates from the days of the dictatorship.

Why should we a penny towards your communication on pure electoral matters with your constituents? Read the full report on Mr Burrowes. He’s used 10k to host coffee mornings… Since Christmas! That must be ~1 per week! I’m as prone to a home made scone as the next voter, but I think these events count as electioneering, and should be paid for via party funds, not taxpayers.

Whether or not you (members) should have voted to give yourself this allowance in the first place is another matter (of course you shouldn’t). That MPs in marginal seats will max out on free (to them) electioneering as a result is a consequence that can be labelled neither unexpected nor unintended.

“Why should we a penny towards your communication on pure electoral matters with your constituents?”

By “electoral matters” do you mean political? because the allowance can’t (quite rightly) be used to promote a party.

I suppose the one advantage of not having a communications allowance is that bloggers would have more time to complain about how little contact MPs have with their constituents…

If you can’t see the qualitative difference between holding an advice surgery, or writing to an elector regarding a constituency matter, and inviting thousands of voters in a three month period to an endless sequence of cake giveaway mornings… Well. I don’t believe you can’t.

I’m far from being a Daily Mail hysteric. But members seem to be deliberately setting out to lower their esteem in their voters’ eyes. Everytime I read of a taxpayer funded hedgerow, porn film, or coffee morning, my generally mild mind conjours up a picture of my last self-funded pension statement & my even milder stomach emits a growl of distress. I’m afraid we are nearly beyond the realm of a reasonable discussion about MPs’ expenditures- who’s fault is that? Iain Dale’s? Come on – and entering the zone where catharsis rather than reason will be required for a solution.

Well I’ll almost, possibly, certainly read your report when I get home.

Hopefully it is about what you have actually done, not how wonderful the labour party is.

Won’t be able to go to the AGM (as you aren’t a company why do you call it an AGM?) though you could, pehaps, record it and post it on YouTube.

The political bit about the communications allowance isn’t very clear to me.

Who decides what is political and what isn’t?

Thankfully, as Ian says, the thinking in the Tory party is against such things.

You’d never get someone like, say, Michael Gove, claiming £15,705 for their Communications Allowance.

Oh, hang on….

Tom:

It would appear that you’re rattled by the ongoing media coverage of MP’s expenses.

If you are rattled – then you’re right to be. This is not going to go away any time soon. If, as has been suggested elsewhere, the un-redacted list of MP’s expenses ever sees the light of day – either in the MSM, or more likely on the web, there may be more than a few MP’s wishing they’d put their hands in their own pockets once in a while.

“And another thing”: I’m not sure that the Borrow story was an Iain Dale “exposé”. More the local paper doing what the national MSM should be doing more of; shining a light into the dark world of taxpayer funded abuse by people with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement.

So when Iain Dale attacks a Labour MP for buying cakes with his communications allowance while (possibly) staying within the very loosely drawn ‘rules’ you jump to the MP’s defence.

When Iain Dale, Guido, et al were (and still are) ripping into Jacqui Smith for her let’s say liberal interpretation of the expenses rules you remained as quiet as the proverbial church mouse.

Can we take it then you agree broadly with the thrust of Dale’s (et al)attacks on Jacqui Smith.

Rhetorical question.

It’s perfectly all right for Tom to use thousands of pounds of taxpayers money to promote himself.

After all, the other candidates standing in his seat in 2010 will also get the same amount of money to puff themselves in the local press and with mailshots, town-hall style meetings (etc) won’t they?

“After all, the other candidates standing in his seat in 2010 will also get the same amount of money to puff themselves in the local press and with mailshots, town-hall style meetings (etc) won’t they?|”

Why would they? I won the last election in Glasgow South. That means I have a different status from someone who simply wants to stand at the next election. When the starting pistol is fired at the start of the next election campaign, I will be a candidate, in exactly the same way as all the other candidates. In the meantime, I’m not a candidate – I’m a Member of Parliament.

Mr Harris, your last post, oh dear. You think that because you were elected you have a right to 10k of your taxpayers’ money pa to promote yourself? It’s an interesting concept; though not, I fear, one with much traction. If Ariel outsells Persil, or Celtic outplays Rangers, do the victors have a right to taxpayer money, in order to maintain their (temporary) hegemony?

Lest it be forgotten, this latest abuse of our money was voted into existence by the same Labour MPs now holding these necessary AGMs/coffee mornings. I wonder why?

Maybe, in the spirit of inclusivity, your planned AGM should have a special, screened-off, online area for the ‘Interpersonally Disabled’ among the ‘And Another Thing’ Tommentariat. We could come along with our paper bags over our heads and join in by computer keyboard, our ability simply to talk to people having atrophied some time ago.

This is just the sort of thing you should be cutting out. Whay have you done to reduce your expenses at this difficult time. ? Probably nothing.

Must resist urge to feed troll… Willpower failing, failing…failed.

You seem to feel that the communications allowance is a perfectly appropriate means for an incumbent (Lab, Con, whatever) to promote themselves while at the same time your colleagues bemoan “Ashcroft money” being used against them.

The ‘incumbency effect’ is always at its strongest when the tools of the state (boundary management, electoral timing, government advertising, electoral laws and procedure, voting rights, press patronage, etc) are used to deflect the righful course of a free and fair election.

Tom. If you can’t see this whole thing stinks then your nose must be full of something. Think for a moment mate, this inherent advantage to the incumbent; You do realise that will be to the Tories advantage after 2010?

Nah, sorry nearly all, I still don’t get it. MPs are accountable to their constituents. Companies, when we used to have companies, would hire fancy consultants to produce brochures for the shareholders informing them of the company’s activities over the year. Some would host fancy stockholder dinners. Universities produce alumni magazines and post them out all over the world.

Why shouldn’t MPs do the same as part of their job, without having to pay for it out of their salaries which are meagre for the responsibilities that they bear and by comparison with legislators elsewhere. It’s about communication, not promotion, engaging with the shareholders. I’d say the same for an MP of any party, whatever their personal circumstances.

Mr Harris – it’s your blog but I urge readers to look at those comments you address and those you choose not too. I repeat what I have said on here before – you and your colleagues, and seeing what Cameron wrote today the Tories too, have no idea about the extent of Public feeling on MPs sleaze and expenses. And if as you suggest we are getting riled up about small things it is because they are part of the drip drip drip of gravy flowing from our taxes into MPs pockets. This will not be yesterday’s chip paper – you need to decide where your loyalty lies to your constituents or to your peers who frankly are taking the piss out of Joe Public and laughing all the way to the bank.

I agree that claims for some other expenses are looking very bad and doing polics in the UK a lot of harm, something that those making some claims ‘within the rules’ appear to have given not a second’s thought to. For that they deserve to be despised.

But staying with the specific topic, who do you think pays for stockholders’ slap-up dinners? I don’t don’t know but my guess is that we do, that the costs are offset against tax. A few cups of coffee, some custard creams, and an annual report from an MP are pretty cheap by comparison.

It’s all a matter of degree. Coffee and biscuits are OK; beer just before a poll amounts to electoral bribery which has been illegal for man years.

Will all MP’s expenses claims be made public?