MPs in Secondary Income Shock

June 29, 2009

flats

The Telegraph’s crusade to boost its circulation and revenue – sorry, expose the corruption endemic in British politics – continued on the weekend, with the Sunday Telegraph publishing details of sundry second (and third, and fourth, and even fifth) jobs held by MPs.

Yes, that’s right. Many MPs are paid for doing things besides submitting imaginative claim forms to Parliament.

This outrageous situation exists because current rules allow MPs to have lives beyond Westminster. Naturally, the rules are subject to other rules, which say that MPs must disclose all their outside employers and directorships in the Register of Members’ Interests. However, the pesky politicians don’t have to detail how long they spend on the work. And they only need to give an indication of much they are paid if the job relates to their work as an MP.

What is to be done? We revert to the idea mooted by someone, somewhere, as the expenses’ scandal kicked off: let us create a purpose-built block of flats for the MPs, or commandeer one near the House of Commons, and make the MPs live there. Let us install CCTV in every room in every flat, in the stairwells and doorways too, so that we can see exactly what they do at all times of the day (and night). Let us pass legislation banning the MPs from doing anything other than serving us, the public. They do not need other jobs or interests – we are what matters. In this way, free of distractions, claim forms or secondary income, the MPs will be sure to do a brilliant job.

Pictured courtesy of Flickr user Dave Halley: a block of flats at Walton-on-Thames. MPs have rejected it as their proposed new collective home because, as they admitted with uncharacteristic honesty, “it’s just far enough from Parliament to enable all kinds of commuting claim scams.”

 

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From the inside of the maze, ethically outwards

February 9, 2012

Curious times in the media; strange days at The Times.

Would ‘Dacre Cards‘ – the system of licensing journalists proposed by Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre – have prevented the embarrassment now palpable at the Times over the NightJack story?

Times editor James Harding’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry seemed heartfelt and contrite, albeit that the paper’s former long-serving and much-respected lawyer, Alastair Brett, seems to have been, er, rather dropped in it. Clearly, mistakes were made with regard to NightJack by young reporter Patrick Foster who, once he had hacked into NightJack’s account and thus discovered his identity, then embarked on a quest to expose it via legitimate methods. This, as Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC put it, was “rather like working from the inside of the maze out”.

But had Foster been licensed via a Dacre Card, would this unsavoury episode in the Times’s history have been avoided?

We suspect not. A raft of laws were in existence at precisely the time when many News of the World journalists seemed to believe that they were entitled to hack any phone they liked. Those laws forbade them from doing so, and yet made no difference. Aside from the obvious objection to them – that they will squeeze out freelancers and citizen journalists – Dacre Cards would simply amount to something to circumvent.

What is really required is an ethical shake-up, from top to bottom. Society generally – not just journalists – needs a sense that some things are just plain wrong.

Supreme Court on Twitter

February 6, 2012

Something remarkable happened today. Yes, the Supreme Court launched its Twitter feed. It even has a Twitter policy, one of caveats, disclaimers and little by way of illumination but regardless: who would have thought that the successor body to the House of Lords would stoop to engage with the world of tweets, hashtags and retweets?

We look forward to the day when court business will be conducted via Twitter. Meantime, check out this link for an excellent blog on the Supreme Court.

Not so right said Fred

February 2, 2012
fred hat

So Farewell, then, Sir Fred Goodwin.

Now you are just Fred.

Not Right Said Fred, but plain Fred.

The Forfeiture Committee did for you.

No one had heard of it before,

But Dave said it had to act, and it did.

Trouble is that no one knows what to think.

Is it ‘Alas, poor Fred‘,

Or ‘Hurray! Sir Fred is dead!’?

We don’t know.

Do you?

By A. Mob, aged 1,378 and a half.