Minister needs to stop whinging!

06/12/2010 12:41 pm

These new politicians have no clue as to what the real world is, they've never been in it!

06/12/2010 12:51 pm

Go PSR that is correct in every way.  How dare they

06/12/2010 2:55 pm

That's the point Melvin. If it were You or I having to work late we would either have to travel home or look for a cheap hotel - either way funding the cost out of our paypacket. This joker however, who is hardly on a minimum wage, expects us to pay for his costs. Part of the reason MPs receive above average earnings is out of respect that they do incur the occassional extra cost such as this, but Shapps wants cream on top of his jam.

Sorry Grant - but you can expect no sympathy for expecting the taxpayer to pay you uncapped benefits.

06/12/2010 5:02 pm

He already has when he was having is earlier crusade to prove he was down with the people, and he didn't do it in winter, and it clearly did not last in his mind.

Can anyone find out if the taxpayer purchased the camp bed for him as that would be classically funny.

07/12/2010 2:16 pm

Apologies for posting a link to a newspaper - but the only alternative would be to cut and paste endless pieces and quotes from the trough grovellers we call MP's

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/8181141/Minister-for-homeless-is-sleeping-in-his-Commons-office.html

Having had to spend nights away from home for work, and at my expense not the taxpayers, I'd have considered £130 per night excessive, yet this lot find it too little so have to sleep on camp beds - which they claim from their expenses.

How can MPs qualify for nearly £1000 per week accomodation on top of their salary, food expenses etc dare ask everyone else to accept pay freezes, higher rail costs, inflation, job losses and benefit caps, especially when the latter is set under half what they may screw from the taxpayer themselves. - Is anyone elses blood boiling on this?

07/12/2010 3:05 pm

As most MPs are based out of London and they have to spend some time in London, to stop abuse and limit expenses, the  governemnt should buy or purpose build new properties in London for the use of MPs which they keep or vacate according to election results, exactly like happens with 10 Downing St.  

Unless this is done our cleveredst MPs will always find a way of bending the rules. 

07/12/2010 3:45 pm

They shouldn't have to camp in the office, but, surely in the taxpayers interest, it would be a good investment for a hotel-type block or block of bedsits could be built and offered at cost room rate to be booked by mps who need to stay over!? I belive they do this in parts of europe already!

07/12/2010 4:36 pm

I can not believe that Shapps has become so blase so quickly. How could he not believe that people would link this moaning about his lack of recourse to taxpayer funding for a second home when he is acting to deny so many access to their first home. How could he be so stupid as to not anticipate his comments would be viewed against the context of massive cuts and increasing poverty. I've never liked the man's politics, but I never thought him to be such a fool. At least when Pickles bleated on about Brentwood being too far to commute one could expect such from the bufoon, but Shapps was supposed to be intelligent!

I've raised the issue with the local press within his Constituency as I believe the many good people of Welwyn and Hatfield deserve to know what their representative is like, and how detached from their daily financial realities he is.

I hope that others will raise the issue in their own areas' press so that people can see what these New Tories are really all about.

08/12/2010 2:51 pm

I can't see the MPs going for the communal properties or the pre-arranged bookings, simply because they would be harder to scam - or am I being to harsh against the trough snuffling money grabbing self serving members.

Fair to a point nonnie, and I endorse the out of pocket expense argument, but in this case from a man who is happily removing the option of affordable and secure housing from the poorest in society it is whinging. When he moans about not be able to claim for accommodation, he misses the point that he could otherwise afford accommodation, yet he is legislating to remove the housing benefit which for some city workers is the only thing that makes there job affordable. If they are forced to move out of their homes because of the loss of benefits they will not be able to afford to travel in to work, and nor will they have a Ministerial Car to bring them to and fro. Perhaps the hypocrisy is more apt than the whinging, but whinging has a better sting to it.

03/01/2012 3:28 pm

Apologies for the missing 'P' - I think someone must have taken it!