MPs £5,000 Food Allowance Should be Taxed in the Budget
Guido first drew attention to the £400 food allowance given to MPs in 2005. Strictly speaking the allowance is £20 per diem. In reality this tax free allowance is worth some £33 to 40% tax rate payers. There is no real justification for it, it is equivalent an extra £5,000* or so a year on MP's income.
There is no reason why this should not be abolished and a more honest and transparent picture of the compensation package of MPs given to the public. At the very least Alistair Darling should announce today that it will be taxed in the normal way as a benefit. Guido does not see why MPs should be treated differently from other self-employed business people who have to account for every penny to the revenue commissioners.
Some MPs claim to have been totally unaware of the allowance. Perhaps that is true. Guido would still like to know the details of who is claiming it.
*Guido is guesstimating, we do not know the details of the payment system and the authorities are resisting FoI requests.
There is no reason why this should not be abolished and a more honest and transparent picture of the compensation package of MPs given to the public. At the very least Alistair Darling should announce today that it will be taxed in the normal way as a benefit. Guido does not see why MPs should be treated differently from other self-employed business people who have to account for every penny to the revenue commissioners.
Some MPs claim to have been totally unaware of the allowance. Perhaps that is true. Guido would still like to know the details of who is claiming it.*Guido is guesstimating, we do not know the details of the payment system and the authorities are resisting FoI requests.
54 comments:
Just why are we providing a soup kitchen for these well paid folk?
As Sinn Feinn chasps are elceted to serve as MPs but don't - what is happening over auditing the monies Bliar agreed to pay them?.
A few days ago an MP was aked about these allowances - and the 'honest' admission was that "they were introduced because the MPs pay had to be seen to be restrained". In other words they were just a back-door pay-rise.
Oink-oink.
are you live-blogging the budget today guido?
IMHO all these extra allowances have been allowed to flourish as surrogate salary increases.
forgot the name of the recent independent (?) commission but the reality is that rises in MP's pay have not been in keeping with other public sector workers.
Of course, MPs voting themselves pay increases is something that Brown is happy to avoid.
So for a permanent solution, some sort of (more) binding independent pay commission?
DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA INCENDERE
If we would know our rulers - in all parties and in all media - look no further than the TV interviews given recently by Armed Forces Minister, Bob AInsworth, MP, on the subject of the Melted Cavalryman.
Bob the Wig, famous for dismissing squaddies' concerns as absolute bollocks, fought bravely himself in the dangerous world of trade union sinecures before donning the Blair Kneepads in 1997. A coarser, crasser, stupider version of Stephen (There's A Good Boy) Pound, Ainsworth is another class traitor in the mould of the cock-waving, thieving bastard, Prescott
On the business end of an RPG, this ungrateful soldier, anyway, was awarded a hundred and sixty grand for receiving seventy per cent burns, his face melted, his ears burnt off and years of agony to come; he came by this shocking set of injuries defending Haliburton's stolen oil in Tony Blair's War for Peace in Iraq and Afghanistan (and other locations, to be announced, as the Great Peacemaker weaves his spells) and Ainsworth, who yearly draws about a hundred and thirty grand in "expenses" - his safe Coventry constituency being thousands of first class miles from London - deemed that a hundred and sixty grand was appropriate compensation; Tony and Imelda have had seven million so far, or is it ten, and never even got near the shooting, although they probably did some hot praying.
Ah, but, whined Ainsworth in his best, know-it-all Brummie, peepul don't rea-loyse, we're paying this man a pension, too, you have to look at things in the round. Yes, minister, look at things in the round, easier when you have no ears. The Opposition of Hooray Henrys don't jeer this worthless piece of shit, Ainsworth, because they, too, are more concerned with their own pensions than in even trying to ameliorate the lifetime of horror faced by this lowly lance-jack, cruel disfigurement and agony and sorrow wrought in a worthless invasion and occupation that they all voted for; micromanage the economy like a good 'un, can George Osbourne but Alistair Campbell shouts WMD! and the boy shits himself. War? Yes, fuck me, I'll vote for that. Maybe, now, instead of embarrassing decent people with his mangled face, Tommy'll just fuck off and die while BoyGeorge and DaveCallMeTony play at being grown-ups, useless pair of truculent, mouthy public school pansies.
Ever loyal to his men, concerned for their post-conflict welfare, General Gabshite Dannant is too busy getting his nose browned, up the Royal Familial arse, too concerned with his own pension and peerage and so it fell to another melted hero, Simon Weston of the Falklands to raise this latest Whitehall obscenity. One melted man speaking up for another, because none in parliament - showering themselves, their families and lovers and rentboys with pensions and expenses and honours and perqs - will. Jesus wept; such filth, lording it over us.
In Scotland a little while ago the Lab-Lib coalition, led by the staggeringly incompetent prick, McConnell and the grinning clown, Wallace, in an attempt to shut down a Scotch criminal justice system scandal, awarded a former wpc a sum of three quarters of a million pounds, £750,000, not for wrongful imprisonment, she was never locked up; not for injury, not a hair on her head was damaged, let alone her face all melted away like wax, no, Shirley McKie was embarrassing the entirely rotten Scotch system of jurisprudence and they wanted her to shut up; McConnell and Wallace, then leader of the Scotch Toileteers' Party and Justice Minister, ensured that Ms. McKie was paid this money to compensate her for her "hurt feelings." Honest. Not invent. Hurt feelings.
Our rulers plunder limitless amounts of our money to ensure their own political survival or the commercial success of their friends with dodgy IT companies, or rubbish banks but they put up this charmless, uncouth, bewigged, jobsworth poltroon, Ainsworth, to chide and pennypinch and force the hideously wounded to beg at the bar of public opinion for a square deal. Thieving, cowardly scum; steal from Tommy and shower the prat Kinnock and his whole gahstly tribe with gold and honours; that's what they're like, that's what they do; is it any wonder they are all so wrong about everything else?
Given some of the anger expressed by disillusioned servicepersons, Ainsworth might well take care in his own luxurious retirement; his own pension, of course, will be armour-plated, but his fat, cowardly arse won't. One night, with any justice, maybe walking his wig on Hampstead Heath, he will hear an angry whisper in his ear, Up Against The Wall, Motherfucker.
£400 / month "food" allowance = £4800 tax free per year.
Thats a lot of champagne, brandy and cigars...
Or according to the Times Ipods:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3330559.ece
Loving the sound of the John Lewis List as well... oink oink
Any receipts involved in getting this loot? or is it yet another slush fund scam.
Shooting's too good for this shower of cnuts.
If they spend all week in Westminster, and occasionally travel up to the constituency every other weekend, how is this working away from home?
Home is where their primary residence is - London.
It's a disgraceful swindle ranking alongside the change from £250 to a £25 expenses claim without receipts. All they need to do is put in 10 claims instead of one, but of course they knew that before they proposed the change didn't they? The photocopiers will be busy!
A message to all the MPs taking advantage of these swindles: it's not your bloody money. Give it back!
No politician (or any public servant) should be paid. Let them have a private income, or a truly popular party that can raise subscriptions to pay salaries and expenses.
This will likely mean that there are very few involved in bureaucracy or politics. All the better!
Blogger Hey said...
No politician (or any public servant) should be paid. Let them have a private income,
We did that, for years. I'm not entirely sure it furthered the course of democracy, but - as most people are smelly and a bit thick - I don't care; let's do it again!
Of course, people who are in favour of democracy might not agree.
Stanislav @ 10:50
On a point of order it is, I believe, common knowledge that John Prescott's cock is far too small to be "waved"!
The following is absolute bollocks is it?
Troops returning from theatre tell of life-threatening shortages of kit, including body armour, satellite phones, oil to prevent guns jamming and electronic equipment to detect roadside bombs.
I know whom I believe.
MPs £5,000 Food Allowance Should be Taxed in the Budget"
That's the last thing nobody's darling will tax.
Trying to find information about the burnt soldier, is (so far) impossible. What are they hiding?
hey
Very good point indeed.
One which I myself made to John Redwood MP. Just to receive a typical politicians, short, self interested, rapidly spinning, reply.
I would gladly contribute an extra limited to £50 per year to constituency funds for my MPs wages. If they did what it says on the tin.
Which is to represent the people that helped them get elected along with the rest of their own constituents.
They would of course have to answer to there own people for their voting patterns and expenses rip-offs. But this is as we know is the real reason why possibly not one single MP in the whole of the HOP would ever even consider supporting the idea.
Politicians generally hate and despise with a passion the people that vote for them even more then the people that do not.
After having to continually sell your soul to the devil, with acutely authoritarian, fascist based, evil lies. While kissing all those nappy filled babies, holding your nose. You would also not be so keen either, on the great unwashed deciding the size of your hard grafted for compensation payout.
Personally until politicians on all sides start mentioning things like The New World order and One World Government. I will continue to distrust all of them. You would be well advised to do the same.
ATLAS shrugged
I was furious at yet another personal attack on myself and my disadvantaged colleagues. When I questioned what I could get for my lunch using my OWN Taxed money, I was told I could get something called a Lion Bar.
However, having spoken to Mr Martin I understand the current highly satisfactory arrangements will remain.
Hooray.
@ Stanislav.
Well said. There's nothing to add, except to express my huge personal rage and grief at such treatment of our people - and that is beyond my capabilities.
Well done.
Interesting...it looks to be about twice as much as Jobseekers Allowance.... which MPs claim is enough to live on...
Most boringest budget ever. The subtext seems to be "the economy's fucked, we're fucked, you're fucked, we're all fucked".
Massive borrowing, increases in inflation, declining growth. Sounds like a recession no matter how they fudge the figures...
Link to Herald
if Guido permits
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.2093238.0.Cameron_sparks_row_over_military_covenant.php
The £400 a month is bad enough, but what about all the other perks? When are all these pigs going to pay tax on their grace and favour homes and the ministerial cars that effortlessly whiz them around the country? They should either pay 40% tax on everything or give it all up and take public transport.
Oops I forgot - using public transport would put them face to face with the much reviled and despised voter, wouldn't it?
Stanislav, your posting was so good, so bang-on-the-money, that I would like to give you all of my worldly possessions, including my wife, my three teenage daughters and my cocker spaniels.
An abridged version of your post must be sent to Bob Ainsworth's local paper in time for the next general election.
Did you see Brown during Cameron's speech? He was squirming, mincing and pouting like a silly little girl. I half expected him to start sucking his thumb.
Great speech by Cameron, and totally correct unlike the nonsense spouted by Brown's puppet Darling.
Nice to see the odious Ed Balls put in his place and humiliated.
4p on a pint of beer, 14p on a bottle of wine and 55p on a bottle of spirits. Fags up 11p. Booze duty to be raised above inflation for four years.
Well done my Darling. All problems solved (except mine).
Doris Day- "MOVE OVER, DARLING".
Anonymous 12.22
He is Lance Corporal Martyn Compton.
try www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3382163.ece - read it and weep.
love from stanislav
Jus'askin', but would any of the erudite scholars happen to know when expenses & subsidised nosh were first introduced.
I cannot imagine Pitt the Younger mulled over the acceptance of the office of PM sustained by an oyster pie & porter courtesy of His Georgian Maj. I wouldn't have thought Winston's so much owed to so few speech related to the HoC cake trolley.
It would be fascinating to find out.
did you hear that wanker balls say "so what" to cameron claim that we have the highest tax burden in history!!!!
he and his minging missus are gettingvery rich from those taxes and he doesnt give a shit. wanker
The USA Army call the British Soldiers `the borrowers` does anything more need to be said?
Stanislav - we love you!
Stanislav, you pseudo pole, Bob Ainsworth is not a Brummie.
Get your facts right.
http://thatsnews.blogspot.com/2008/03/camra-slams-inflation-busting-beer-duty.html
13% increase in the price of a pint? Bloody fool.
Guido,WHO are "the authorities" resisting your FOI requests?
No reason for you to shelter the Porkprotectors!!!
anon @ 12:57
It does rather seem like it - Darling's attack on incapacity claimants (nearly all of whom are ill)sums up this shower to a T. They'll hand out money left-right and centre to job-centre chavs, asylum seekers, council flat grabbing single mothers - but when it comes to those who actually worked but are now ill - oh, that's a different matter.
Never mind, the economic slump will blow NuLab away.
They should not get any food allowance if they have a BMI over 25.
anon at 12.57
addendum to your suggested subtext:
The Labour party in particular are completely fucked and will not win the next election so may as well keep borrowing for the next 2 years;
Career "single" mothers with several kids now have even less disincentive to be fucked
well, that was a fun budget. How can something be so boring and so shit at the same time?
It was the ITV2 of budgets
it was a dull budget , but camerons rebuttle was excellent .
he couldnt have gone far wrong with "this chancellor is an utter wanker as is the PM"
still going ahead with runway three, fuel from crops. fairenough granny gets extra for fuel , but she need it with bread going up near 40% in 6 months and gas 18% .
fuck me hes just re arrangeing rubble and tell us it will work out.
every family is in debt and he chuffs on about savers , oh of course he must be on about how mps manage on there allowance subsidised lifestyle like the rest of us . mortgage paid , food paid living expenses paid . it must be so easy to put money away when everything else is taken care off .
best of all he taxing the pub trade , where most die hard labour voters go to drown there sorrows after watching labour propoganda .
well done cameron , you seem to be getting to see how corrupt this bunch are ,
review footage and watching them all shitting it , like the liars that they are .
and darling is now browns sock puppet for certain ,
Oh stanislav re your last sentence - I do hope so, I really do. Can we arrange to get it on youtube?
OT. Re the budget, Did Balls really say 'so what' to Cameroons point about being the highest taxed ever? was it recorded? Whatever doesn't it just tell you everything about this nuliebour shower.
Dear Mr person of no fixed mind: Bob Ainsworth is not a Brummie.
No, maybe not but stanislav did not say that Ainsworth was a Brummie, just that he spoke it, which, like most Coventrians or West Midlanders, he does. Anyway, you troll people all look and sound the same to us immigrants; especially you who sleep in political doorways.
You are much better off in your place down the road with Mr Cranmer. He really is an Archbishop. And you really are a stupid,nit-picking cunt.
love from stanislav.
Fuck me!
I can get a heap of decent chinese lunch for £4.50 in the city of London(well the slightly dodgy part of it inhabited by slightly dodgy characters) and these cunts cant get by on less than a £100 a week for food?(fucking more when you take into account how little time the cockstones actualy spend in London)
Maybe we could persuade more of them to follow Mark oatens example. I for one would be very happy to donate my turds for an MP to eat, NO CHARGE!
I would also be happy to piss all over caroline flints tits followed by a blow job from Dennis Skinner sans false teeth.
While they give themselves £20 a day for food, students are expected to live on around £30 a week.
It was Bob Ainsworth who answered the question which allows us to compare the costs of feeding MPs at the arse-end with feeding soldiers at the sharp end:
Based on actual food and storage and distribution costs, and forecast personnel numbers for March 2008, the average cost per capita, per diem, of food, and the storage and distribution of food, for troops and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan is as follows:
Cost (£)
Iraq 6.47
Afghanistan 12.84
Source: Hansard 7 Mar 2008 : Column 2849W
...
Stanislav says it best.
One note: McKie was one of those 'connected to' cases which affect more than first appears: notably, all the convictions dahn sarf which relied on crap expert witness testimony. The relevant Wiki line is: "At an earlier stage of the case against the Scottish Executive the Lord Advocate Colin Boyd argued that expert witnesses should always be immune from prosecution – even if they gave false evidence..
This issue is due to go live again in a few weeks. The current fudge in the English courts is that you probably can make a complaint against a lying bastard of an expert fantasist, but it is more hard work than you can possibly imagine and the chances of the police investigating and the CPS bringing a case are vanishingly small. That’s because they are usually the people paying the expert witnesses on a ratio of 12-1, and experts can get paid £750 a sheet for reports (no limit on how many sheets they produce), plus a juicy appearance fee. Or 115 days of Iraqi dinners, if you prefer.
Other than that, Stanislav’s plan is a good one and if there were any justice in the world there would be Googlewall to help us find the nearest tall, straight run of reliable Polish-constructed brickwork.
There is a very simple solution to this whole MPs expenses nonsense:
Pay them £150 000.00 a year but mandate that that is the only money they will get from public funds. From that they will have to pay all of their costs and expenses. So they can employ their relatives to do no work, acquire as many properties as they desire and travel however they wish, but they are paying for it from their £150k.
That should concentrate the buggers minds on value for money.
It seems excessive and certainly should be taxed.
We used to get an allowance at work for meals but only if we were away from our base (which had no canteen unlike Parliament) but were told it was stopped because of the Inland Revenue.
Stanislav @ 10:50
Great post. It cuts to the bone, with pure truth.
lola
balls did say "so what"
cameron responded about him being the minister for children
Thanks Stanislav, that is the link I've been searching for.
(My thanks also to the other provider).
no fixed abode,
ofcourse it really doesn't matter where bob ainsworth came from.
what is important is where he is going and that is
"Up Against The Motherfucking Wall!"
ainsworth is a flesh eating satanist zombie and he features prominently upon the list.
if there is a hell, you're going bob. you fucking cunt.
Bob Ainsworth, what a spunk bubble.
When I don't have long to live, and it can't be far away.
I will do the 'Up against the wall motherfucker' and make some people pay.
In fact, for best effect, no one will see me coming, no one will hear me, the fucking lights will just go out. In this way I'll get to do as many as possible, with any luck and the incompetence of laziness of plod.
To all those cunts who slag this off as a Tory blog, I will be coming for any shit who treats heros such as Martyn Compton in this way.
I won't discriminate on the grounds of race, religion, sexual fucking orientation or political persuasion.
You will all get a fucking 9mm between the eyes.
Stanislav I am not a troll.
But when some sad little wanker starts bleating "troll" it makes the rest of us wonder about you.
Dear Mr NFPA
I am rebuked. I am sure you speak for thousands of nit-picking cunts, so many of whom have leapt, here, to your defence. In future I will give your reproaches the merit they deserve. And I will start now:
For your much-needed education, Coventry is part of the West Midlands conurbation, of which Birmingham is the centre, it is perfectly in order to say to the global audience which visits order-order that the wretch, Ainsworth, speaks with a Brummie accent; to all but an academic dialectician, or a professional Brummie like Dr Carl Chinn, he does. What is your point ? Do you deny the content of my original post because Coventry is twenty miles south west of Birmingham ? Is that the best you can do ? Are you a member of some secret Ordnance Survey Jihad ? Have you, really, nothing better to do than insult those who seek a better deal for wounded soldiers ? Is it your mission to attempt to undermine a perfectly legitimate and necessary protest on the basis of some imaginary geo-linguistic error? Gordon Brown must be proud of you, you horrible fucking cretinous stooge. Why don't you take your facile nit-picking arse to meet Lance Corporal Martyn Compton, see what he makes of your map-reading skills; I bet he'll love you. Just as I do.
To person of no fixed political abode.
At first I thought you just a brain-dead pedant, who allowed the import of something that should stir you, as it does us, to heights of towering rage, pass you by. That the cunts who lead your nation, and send your countrymen into battle, should so treat those men when they have given their all, would be enough to make a Barbarian weep. But not you, of no discernible sentience, you are exercised by whether or not the narrator has made an error of DIALECT!
Stanislav very politely called you a nit-picking cunt, which was a bit of a gift for an asshole like you - but no you come back for more - "I'm not a troll", you bleat, having once again failed to spot either the import of what is being done in your name , or the fact that you are behaving like the cunt you have so generously been called.
No fixed political abode? Or moral or compassionate, in fact under the fucking arches you piece of secondhand bog-bumf. Just fuck right off, and take your warm-hearted compassion back home under the tracks. You utter cunt.
With apologies to sitondafence.
Than you Stanislav for giving this travesty of justice the attention it deserves.
Yo Mr 45 Govt
If only you could write smart one-liners like Mr Nobody; still, forcing all that Brown cock down his throat probably focuses his mind wonderfully. And look on the bright side, you can walk past a barracks in safety whereas poor Mr Nobody has to stay in the hostel all the time, wanking.
love from stanislav
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