Your views

Dear Sir,
MP’s expenses are again in the news. In Friday’s Bulletin Gerry Mulligan devoted his page to the problem. He places much of the blame on inadequate vetting of expenses. I agree but also partly to blame are ourselves – the voters. Some of us hold MPs to be worse even than bankers – the dregs of society. We begrudge every pay increase and the leaders of all the parties know this and hope to relieve the antipathy by regularly calling on all of their members to forgo any extra cash awarded. For the chiefs there is no real problem as they get a lot more than the basic pay plus can look forward to thousands for just showing up at company do’s when they leave Westminster. Tony Blair has so much coming in he reputably has given millions to charities.
Just over £1000 a week may seem a lot but almost all of the MPs could earn much more outside Parliament. Some already do by having a second job often for paying much more. MPs had to put up with this for years until they got a new shop steward (aka the Speaker of the House) who knew about pay deals - Michael Martin also known as Gorbals Mick. Another native Rab C Nesbitt would disagree that this was insulting (worse than pleb?). Gorbals for him is a class less society – no one there has any class at all! Speaker Martin had many years’ experience as a real shop steward. He arranged to have the vetting department turn a blind eye to high expenses and let the MPs know this so that they could “compensate” for their frozen pay packet. Members from all parties took advantage. When forced to resign this labour stalwart took the Queen’s Shilling to become Baron Springburn, retire to the Lords and charge his own expenses.
We should have MPs pay & conditions tied to a civil service grade with the PM and the like forbidden to interfere. In addition if we accepted state funding for elections another area of corruption would be reduced. Neither is likely to happen as both moves would be highly unpopular with voters and the party leaders we have are short termers and try to hang on to power regardless of long term benefit to the country.
Mike Lillico
Playa de Palma