Its all getting a little confusing out there, the Westminster bubble has spat out its inhabitants into the real world where they face real questions (some insightful, some slanted, some irrelevant) and face the people they are supposed to serve well. The expenses casualties have returned to their businesses, retirement villas, court rooms, and in a few cases, prosecutions. The Westminster bubble stands ready to suck up a new intake but in the meantime we, the people, get to test these wannabes with fiery questions, uncomfortable hot tongs put in places they don't want probed, and merciless inquisitions by TV versions of Tomás de Torquemada, so far Stewart (ITV) & Boulton (Sky) have maintained steely control of the debates and been scrupulously fair... not! Boulton asked Clegg a direct question to follow up his bosses newspaper led smear on Clegg, maybe it was against the rules I don't know, but it was a strange moment. Was Ruperts pre-senile dementia is showing through his megalomania? Did he think Sky's high quality news team was going to be able to give the smear story some more legs? After all his papers had spent 5 minutes researching after they had been told what to print, may as well get your moneys worth out of a smear you've splashed out on... maybe he thought it would sway a voter or two. In the end his news teams glamour over intellect employment scheme made us all laugh at the incompetence of the presentation and the unsubtle leanings (broken Britain motif studio, unsubtle smear... anyone would think he had it in for the LibDems!).

A press we don't deserve
The Leadership debates have stolen the limelight from the meat of manifesto proposals (they are never pledges or promises whatever the advertising says) which is not a great outcome, but they have also brought the election into the homes of millions of voters who would otherwise have probably been indifferent or uninformed. They have also brought the politics of personality and dropped it firmly into the lap of couch potatoes everywhere, the leaders have behaved fairly well, there have been no fisticuffs or thrown glasses of water. But when you have a 4th estate (the press) who are, by and large, fixated on celebrity and grovelling to their paymaster owners the politics of personality becomes a toxic mix.

Murdochs stable has injected invective and bile into the proceedings, no great surprise really as they feed the British public a steady stream of neo-fascist half truths, exaggerations, and unpalatable lumps of columnist driven "opinion" every day. But this election is about change and the right wing opinion columnists are screaming from the rooftops about all the things that are bad, mostly that's anything that has changed in the UK since 1950. Its a sickening sight to see the UK's "free" press so bereft of its own ideas and rolling over to have its tummy tickled by the people they should be investigating impartially, you know, its like being a reporter, except without the predetermined angle, like... telling the unvarnished truth. The press wonders why Blogging is rising in popularity, well its because a large section of them can no longer be trusted to actually give impartial analysis so the market has opened up to fill the gap left.

Election fever!
I've mentioned the Leadership debates, they have been useful if they get more people out to vote, if they have shone a light onto the parties policies, and to some extent they have done all the above. People are talking politics almost everywhere, the discussions have been sparked by the debates, but they drift into policy sooner or later and the surprising thing is that almost everyone knows something about the policies on offer. The other surprising thing is that the debates are reaching the people who probably wouldn't have voted and those who were and are floating voters, its opened up the two party system we have suffered with for 80 years into a three horse race. The Labour and Conservative parties seriously misjudged the impact of having Clegg on the programs, Whats happened is that marginals have become more marginal where the LibDems were in 2nd or 3rd place, this might not be a big deal come the Night of the X as there are an awful lot of X's needed to make a seat change hands.

The one thing that the debates are not doing is changing the minds of those tribal core votes who will not listen to any other party than that they have voted for for X years. These idiots who are unthinking X printing machines are actually the ones who are killing this country, it makes no difference whether a policy is a good one or a bad one, if its from the wrong party its to be attacked and abused, no thinking about how to make it work, no independent thought, no analysis, no assessment of fitness, its just wrong because it has the wrong political hue behind it. Short sighted ignorance that is the hallmark of a failed political system. hats needed is a nation of floating voters prepared to listen to all the policies and make a decision on which is best for the country for the region, for the town, for "me". Instead UK is riven by closed minded and open mouthed fools, plenty of them also happen to be working as newspaper columnists or political strategists in party HQs. They are not serving the nation well, they have failed the test that a real education would have given them. 

"I agree with Nick" was a gift during the first debate, Cameron and Brown both listened to advisor's who should be turning burgers in a local fast food joint. the Conservatives were desperately keen to avoid showing the "nasty Party" aspect of their political personality, Labour were keen to show authority and a safe pair of unexciting hands. Fair enough they had success in that, but in doing so they failed their core vote who wanted to see them putting the boot into the other, and the held the door wide open for Nick Clegg to steal the show.

Camerons performances have been lackluster, there's no great debater there, he might be a nice guy but he has failed to make anything other than the blandest of impressions. Not at all what I expected, I thought he would shine at TV debates instead it has been rather like watching a charisma transplant victim struggle to appear to be an ordinary guy with no divisive policies to mesmerise and entertain the troops with. Brown has appeared to enjoy the mere fact of the debates, the smile I saw occasionally was of pleasure not the s**t eating leer he uses all too often (smiles and Gordon are just not comfortable bed fellows on TV), he might be a jolly happy man in private but it just looks weird when he smiles to camera. he has been comfortable and in command of his stats and facts, but he suffers with the lack of personal and political charisma (the things I thought Cameron would have in spades). I have nothing to add about Clegg that hasn't been analysed to death elsewhere, he has done well, not well enough, but he was never going to have an easy second debate.

Danger Danger Will Robinson!
This election is feeding expectations somewhat in the way the '97 election did. People have a taste for change, its not a change to Conservatives, its not to LibDems (although they are carrying the weight of the expectation), there's a desire post-expenses to have an Augean stables style clean out of the House of Shame, to make real change in the way Parliament works and interacts with the electorate.

The danger is that if Labour or Conservatives get in (or to some extent the LibDems) the desire to see real and rapid change to the Westminster Culture will not be satisfied. Given the inertia of the Establishment, Whitehall, and Parliament itself i can't see how any party can be the equal of the desire! Should they fail and feed a diet of more of the same old same old Westminster failure, whining, and glacial movement then all that desire will be wasted, not just until the next election but for a generation. Can our way of democracy survive another generation of cynicism and unbelief secure inside its Westminster bubble? No. Either changes are implemented in our democracy or our democracy's fault lines and stress points will open up and swallow the whole edifice. What will take its place is anyone's guess, but I expect it will not be as comfortable as the last 60+ years have been for anyone. The crushing disappointment of a major failure will break our system.

I can't see the Conservatives doing anything other than what they have always done, shrink Government, replace it with an unelected private sector, play magicians tricks with taxation (how can anyone have a tax giveaway manifesto while slashing public spending and paying off the national Debt... its a fairy story with, I suspect, an unhappy beginning and end - a Thatcher soundalike without the bitter pill warning she clearly put on the bottle), and generally be approved of by those who "know best", its not the nanny state but it is a state of Nannies.

Labour seem genuine enough, but they have had 13 years to get it right, its no damned good to have good ideas on the eve on an election, action when you are faced with the sack is just window dressing on failure. I don't think the Labour party has failed massively in recent years, they have steered a course that has avoided the worst effects of the Bankers recession and protected a fair amount of UK citizenry and business. They have made huge blunders (all that money to the banks) and made unpopular decisions like the Afghan War but Governments must make unpopular decisions so its a price any party of Government pays at election time. The Labour Government has (in my opinion) a shorter lists of failures and cock-ups than the preceding Conservative administration which was riddled with incompetency, laziness and plain old ignorance.

This election is a poison pill for the LibDems unless they get a clear majority (which lets face it, is highly unlikely), if they form a coalition they fail because they will be engaged with one of the old parties that has been rejected by the electorate, if they refuse to form a coalition they will fail because the other parties and potentially the country will blame them for resulting instability. Perhaps the best result for them is to become the second party and the official opposition and make a really good job at it. This could make them a serious contender for the next election and consign either Labour or Conservatives to the waste bin of history. In this dream scenario I could see Labour surviving as the third party, but he Conservatives would splinter and self destruct.

Get out and VOTE!!!
Whatever the result of this election its in our hands, so get out there and don't waste this opportunity to reshape the landscape of British Politics for the next 30 years!! Get yourselves informed, ask hard questions of those who would sit in Westminster and ignore you for 5 years BUT VOTE from a position of knowledge, not electoral tribalism or ignorance about the policies, or out of fear of what THEY claim the other candidates stand for.

Prospective Parliamentary Candidates send round door step representatives who (from my own experience) are ignorant of what their candidate stands for (they don't know their own parties manifesto), they usually can't argue a point if you do have an opposing view (so aren't persuaders), and they are only too happy to smear the opposing candidates as my Conservative door step canvaser did. Maybe if we all agreed to vote for candidates who don't smear we would get better candidates in the first place.

AND please stop buying the rubbish end of the British press that so perverts, debases, and undermines the UK democratic process in the service of its own Dark and self serving Lords and owners desperately trying to install their creatures into the corridors of power. Learn to analyse and value information, don't rely on the vomit spewed forth from the opinion columns... help make a better, fairer, more meritocratic country! Wouldn't it be lovely if only the papers with integrity and newspaper reporting skills survived the next Government, the newspapers could actually help inform and educate their readers rather than just shoveling them toxic hate and fear based innuendo and gossip. Proper Journalists in Proper impartial papers... could it ever happen?

Il Papa comes to town (lock up your choirboys)
I rather liked the "secret" Foriegn Office brainstorm document produced in advance of the Popes visit to the UK! The poor sods who wrote it have been moved to other posts when the kind of irreverent free thinking, mockery they displayed should have given them a rapid set of promotions. they upset the stuffed shirts and paid the price. They said nothing that most of the secular UK has not said already, or what most right thinking religious types have been disgusted with in their Priestly hierarchy.

What exactly is wrong with showing a visiting head of state all the things that are wrong or stupid about their dogma or policies. Instead some poor working stiff has been shifted sideways like some kind of paedophile priest being moved from one parish to another. the Pope must not be embarrassed, hell no! After all he has just sat upon or actively hidden the unsavory activities of his employees... its not like he was doing the kiddy-fiddling himself, just allegedly enabling its continuance.

What next? Kim Jong-Il comes to visit and we serve him up 3 rice grains to remind him of how his governments failures are starving his nation, Ayatollah Khamenei turns up so we close down all secular universities and whats left of our free press to make him feel at home? Some fundamentalist Islamic religious figure comes to London so all women should grab a handy hijab? Quit pandering to these "Leaders", get an ethical foreign policy that treats leaders the way they deserve not the way they expect, show them all the things that make UK a great country and that keep them as a corrupt medieval backwater.

Whitehall YOU SUCK big time, and you suck up to other nations Leaders in stupid ways, sod diplomacy, people (including leaders) generally learn how to do things better when someone shows them the error of their ways rather than pandering to them and sweeping the nasty stuff under a Whitehall carpet!! You smile and wet nurse the Pope, there will be plenty of the rest of us who will protest his tacit tolerance of paedophilia in his church and his failure to try and save his flock from disease and poverty with simple technologies by sticking rigidly to dogma's that have failed his people (just like Kim Il Jong and Khamenei and Mugabe). 

We are coming to the end of this Parliaments life, it has been perhaps one of the most reviled and hated Parliaments since Cromwell threw out the Long Parliament, or Callaghans parliament navigated the country onto the financial and industrial equivalent of Eddystone Rocks.

I still strongly believe that a Parliament of Independents, unladen with party political dogma and able to judge issues on their own merits rather than through the prism of a) a career within a particular political grouping and b) the horrors of the Party line would offer a Parliament that is more responsive to the constituents wishes and the needs of the constituency and country in general!

There was a superb moment in "The Peoples Politician" (BBC) when Miss Widdecombe announced that the vote she casts in Parliament was HER vote and that it was her decision on how to cast it regardless of the expressed wishes of her constituents - and they had taken the time to meet her to ask her to act on their behalf. Now if that isn't whats at the root of the voting crisis I am a monkeys uncle! MP's should be prepared to interact with and take on board the views from the constituency. I'm not saying they should be voting automatons - they should be able to debate and explain the issues to the constituents - but currently they disappear into the Westminster bubble and have the following voting decision tree:

1. What the party tells me to vote
2. What my sponsors/lobbyists tell me to vote
3. How I want to vote
4. Vote to avoid this issue causing me re-election trouble personally
5. How my pet wants me to vote
6. How Lord Gzark of the Vorgon Interstellar Empire wants me to vote
7. How constituents who have taken the trouble to get in touch over an issue want me to vote

What I'd like:
1. Having informed them about the issue, debated and listened to views from my constituency I have formed a balanced judgement and will vote accordingly
2. Many voters from my constituency have asked my to vote a certain way, I shall express that view with my vote
3. This issue has not been addressed by constituents, I will vote as I see fit
4. The party instructs me to vote this way

This bottom up system would kill the lobby corruption making machine - or at least change its target to persuading constituents not MPs, bring MPs back into the local community and make politics accessible and interactive.
There you go... UK election turnout sorted and the relationship between public and MPs repaired! Tell me I'm wrong!!

By the way... English Democrats seem to have 4 policies expressed in 16 lines, at least 2 of the policies are unworkable and based on some very dubious and unattributed statistics! I think they and we (the electorate) are probably better off if they stay at home drinking tea!

I find the difference between the Conservative and Labour reactions to the expenses payback revealing. Those of independent means simply write a cheque quietly, those for whom the MP salary is the primary income show a real problem paying sums back (not that I agree with the idiocy of slurping long and hard at the trough initially).

The embers of this disgraceful affair show that what we need are MPs who are paid slightly more otherwise how can ordinary folk be expected to apply for the job if they cannot live on the salary? Camerons tribe appear not to be worried by this and I imagine the Tory old guard would be more than happy with a Parliament stuffed with Nobs and baby aristo's, but its not good for our country unless we really want to turn the clock back to the days when only landowners had the right to sit!

That said I am shocked by the short sightedness of MPs who cannot see the long term effects of this affair and their current actions. I think there is a case now being made for sweeping the current rotten Parliament and Parties away (closing Parliament before any General Election) and coming up with something fit for purpose.

Redact me gently
MP's continue to take the heat for the expenses they have been merrily dipping into for years. The gravy train has hit the buffers for now but the engine drivers are still stoking the boiler.

With an astoundingly idiotic show of sensitivity to the moment the Dept of Resources has taken its highly polished, establishment approved, Old school brogues and shoved them as far up its nether end as is possible to go. Even better with that touch of total arrogance that evokes the playing fields of Eton the Dept. of Resources has superbly demonstrated how to screw the people it serves even worse than they were before... the MP's.

I'm talking about the pointless and over-enthusiastic redacting of the MP's expenses in the online release. Not only does it illustrate the attitude of those that run the dept of Resource to the Freedom of Information Act and the Public at large, but also highlights the degree of incompetence that has led the Resource Division into the deep dark place it now lives in. Such ineptitude can surely only end with a Peerage for the old boys network members that run the Commons like a school tuck shop. lets not forget that the Fees Office (part of Resources) was happily encouraging MP's to claim every last cent they were even vaguely entitled to.

This organisation has been instrumental in the corruption of the body politic and in a rear guard action to try and maintain the image of the members of the Commons as the landed Gentry of old. the people at the top have to go, it was bad enough that they were involved in the expenses scandals but this degree of political brain failure and sheer incompetence has to claim some of the people who run these departments.

I checked a few of my local MP's accounts and while they were entertaining there was nothing spectacularly stupid in them... LOL,,, had you going there! Mark Hobans were fairly innocuous - a TV set for £700, a camera for £200 (which I didn't understand the relevance of), a picture costing £150 for a local paper (if he had the camera he could have saved some), more images for the website (that pesky camera must have broken), furniture, and loads of bedding which was a recurring theme.

Sir Peter Viggers were the funniest, thousands spent on his gardens, planting, mowing, pest control, and irrigation... and no duck house in sight. Then there's the repairs to a carpet caused by coal dropping out from a light fire... obviously our fault and we should pay for that,  Finally that old essential for Parliamentary work the £100 service on the AGA, one just can't get anything done without the AGA being fully fit.
There were others - the fitting of a double plug in a garage is obviously connected to Parliamentary work - but nothing outstanding... overall a lot of black pixels died in the making of the massive expose and FoI compliance procedures.

Apparently MP's had sight of the redacted versions of what was to be published and they didn't have the political judgment of small furry rodents and let the blacked out pages pass into the public domain. Apart from anything else is this crop of Westminsterites really up to the job? With a record of so many awful decisions on the expenses publication issue and having been persuaded to grab as much dosh as possible by Civil Servants from the Fees office you really have to wonder if they are not just failures who haven't understood what the nation expects from them. We could have done better electing a bunch of trained chimpanzees, at least they wouldn't dived under our expectations so badly as this lot has. 

Cash cash everywhere
one of the things the expenses do show is that the Parties are making money out of the system too. Many of the Social clubs and associations charge the MP for office space in the buildings and for secretarial services offered. What would happen if any other business tried to rent the office space once the MP was no longer in office. My guess is that they would be shown the door fairly quickly meaning that this isn't a real rental, its a way of funneling a little cash to the local associations. Also I reckon that if the MP has office space in the constituency that should exclude any home office payments. how many places can they possibly want to work when they are only there at the weekends?

There's an obvious case for a fixed office that is in the Town Hall or on the High Street and is just occupied by the sitting Member.

Bye bye Mr Martin
Speaker Martin has gone and he had a go at the Party Leaders as he left, for not doing something about the expenses system a year earlier... can't help feeling that if he felt like that he should have been a lot quicker to comply with the FoI requests from Heather Brooke and a little slower at leaping into the court cases to keep everything secret. Might be a jolly nice chap but completely inept at sensing the changes surrounding Parliament and leading it on a safe path through them. A man of limited vision and not suited to the times, hope the next one os better.

The Lords
I found the expenses for the members of the Lords on the Parliament website. £30K a year for accommodation is the best I have seen. The Bishops have also surprised me by being fairly frugal, it would have been so much better to find they were milking the system.

Why isn't Politics pretty?
Why is the main event of the British Politics week always such a total waste. Prime Ministers question time is possibly one of the few times people tune in to Parliament live. Its inevitably an unedifying sight, Brown fumbling over his points, Cameron trying to be clever and never quite getting an actual relevent question in without some poke at Labour, and behind it all the herd of lesser spotted idiots braying for all they are worth. Its an opportunity to show off all that could be great and all parties squander it in trivial populist point scoring - or in Camerons case no points scored.

You could pick a random selection from any class of 12 year olds and get them to call each other names across a playground and get the same effect. i can't understand why our "Prime Minister" in waiting (Cameron) can't quite shake the name calling and silly questions out of his repetoir and actually use this session effectively. Clegg gets it right most of the time but Cameron just wastes it. Maybe its the mans/parties nature getting in the way... I admit that it is exactly how I expect Tories to act, it plays to my prejudices, but it really looks like he is following the jolly old bunfight in the rectory  model from school days. Prat!

The debating chamber activities have to start looking like they are run by and for grown ups, otherwise someone will walk in who gets fed up with it and ignores the whole process for the devalued coinage it represents... and to be honest it would be good riddance. The whole Debating chamber spectacle is negative publicity when it doesn't need to be, and if they want to play on like that let them go be lunch room monitors because thats all they are fit for.

I don't trust you with my money
I've identified a key problem I have with the conservatives. I don't trust people who have never had to struggle for money to have any empathy for the less well off in society and the Conservatives are mostly public school, trust funded, never had to worry about money type people. I don't trust those sorts of people to have any real understanding or appreciation of just what money means to real people or how hard they work to get a small bit of it. I think they have no grasp on the realities of being everyday. None of thier front bench strike me as having been unemployed and wondering how they are going to pay the mortgage (apart from asking Mater and Pater for an advance).

Perhaps before any MP takes thier seat in Westminster they should be required to take a months appreciation course by living in a high unemployment area and on unemployment benefit, and only benefits, no sneaking a thousand out of the Trust fund. Then they should have a refresher week every summer during thier holidays just to make sure they don't forget.

Perhaps the opposite should be true as well, and some should have to live like the Duke of Westminster to gain an appreciation of how the ultra wealthy live... perhaps it should assigned by a lottery? "David Cameron, Toxteth, unemployed ,1 child income, Dennis Skinner, Hever Castle, 2 million a week to spend"...

Take me home country road
Its almost all over, MP's are gearing up for the holiday season. they only have another 4 weeks to survive (21st July) before they disappear off on their holidays until 12th October. its just the odd 2 and a half months during which time they will obviously be working hard for us in their constituencies and not blagging their way through some other job or sunning themselves in the Maldives, well we can trust them to be doing that can't we.

NO! They have committed fraud and mistakes throughout their expenses why should we believe they are now going to be sitting at home with noses to the grindstone while they pull in their parliamentary salary. We can look forward to some insightful reports into the importance of the pineapple industry and the effect of salt water on coral reefs I suspect.

Some will be heading off on Parliamentary fact finding holidays missions and these will obviously not include any requirement for swimming trunks, bikinis, or paracetamols for hangovers.

Come work for nothing
Yes companies are asking people to take a wages holiday, work for nothing for a month. It is unrealistic to expect people on low wages to have the kind of reserves of cash to do this, for those that have high paying jobs its pretty easy to live off the layers of financial blubber you have built up over the years. How about offering the option for a wage holiday but instead of not getting paid offer the workers shares in the business as an incentive and as fair exchange?

Whats on the Horizon
More misery for MP's as the Telegraph fills in the redacted gaps, more misery as the Committee looking into Expenses system fudges its recommendations. Its a long season of no real change as I suspect the movement that was growing to demand change is exerting less pressure now and its only when we get to election time that we will suddenly see MP's waking up to the smoldering resentment that will still exist. 

Because the elections are first past the post we won't see much change in the make up of the system unless the independents that have been created can build a head of steam behind them... if that happens its all up for grabs. Its not an impossible dream!

More sleaze gentlemen please!! Nice holidays and less tending to your constituencies during the Summer should fit the bill and the expectations that the public have built up about you... and it'll keep the wedge of hope that's jammed into the Electoral door alive and with it the chance for a real clear out and modernisation of the Houses of Shame.

This week there has been a collective sigh of relief from Westminster as the Brown cabinet has publicly gutted itself. The heat has suddenly gone out of the Expenses scandals and most MP's have been keeping a low profile unless they have been resigning. They must be wondering how long the Brown disaster show can keep rolling, and praying that it puts enough distance between the Telegraphs rolling headlines and them, and fingers and toes crossed that the stories about excessive consumption will just die.

What has the cabinet been doing? As far as I can see Hazel Blear was the keystone for the collapse, she got caught on the fiddle, brown rapped her knuckles and essentially showed her the door but left it to her to save a scrap of dignity by resigning. Once that happened the Blairite rump cabinet seems to have decided that they would follow her out of the door. Perhaps theres more to it, but from where I sit Blears allegedly had her fingers in the till and should have been sacked. From the Brown point of view it must have been pretty convenient as there seems to have been little love lost between him and (allegedly) a potential rival for party leadership. Now I never had much time for Blears, she was possibly the worst communicator of the Government message that ever got on TV. She always avoided answering direct questions and seemed to choose an answer that suited the question she would have liked to have been asked instead... and whatever answer she gave sounded like she only knew the broad brush strokes and didn't have a handle on any detail, all the while wearing that smug, self satisfied little smile. She was a hugely irritating TV performer, I won't miss her.

So Brown presumably had bad intelligence about hs cabinets solidity, or there was some kind of mutual suicide pact between the Blairites. Either way the impact at the polls this week has been devastating and could still claim the Prime minister as a victim. It has been a month when English politics (not Scottish and probably not Welsh) has been slowly eviscerated, and now the fascists have come out to play as a direct consequence of the Expense scandal and the amazing imploding Cabinet.

Well this is a fine mess the politicians in the Westminster bubble have got us into... are you happy now? Your shenanigans were a major reason the vote didn't turn out, get over yourselves (and its all of you, not just the Labour lot).

The sight of Griffin and Brons taking seats is bad enough but if they start spouting their brand of politics and branding it as UK thinking then we have a serious image problem. Our best hope is that they are totally incompetent and let the mask slip. I notice with dismay that even the BBC is hedging about the BNP now (although many news presenters were admirably forthright in thier labeling earlier) by labeling them an "anti-immigration" party, which while true is like calling the Black Death a minor public health incident.

The Brown conundrum
How does the hair shirt Prime Minister get back into the public's good graces, I have a cunning plan to offer him! Use your understanding of hair shirts to push through real change in Parliament, be the public's champion and over the next year totally reform it, rip the rule book to pieces and rewrite it. If Brown can pull drastic reforms that will get public support then you will find political salvation. ignore Party lines, ignore the squealings of MP's and go for it big time. What do you have to lose Gordon? The love of your party, the next election, your Prime Ministership? if you are seen to be working on the public's behalf your party won't dare oust you, the public stands a better chance of rewarding the man who puts Parliament through radical and rapid reform, and then the Party will love you again. Its a win win win scenario!

Of course if you can't find the magic key to the next General Election then you are doomed (there's no way you will lead into the next election without the Magic key above or something similar) and Labour with you. Now I don't in particular like Browns Labour party, its stodgy, unappealing, depressing, plodding, unoriginal, uninspiring, there's not a radical bone in its body and I just have a gut feeling that Caroline Flint might be the PLP future (I like the way she gives straight answers most of the time), she seems to have what it takes to be a female cross between Blair and Thatcher... but please don't give Blears a way back onto the front bench!

I don't trust the Conservatives having lived through the long night of sleaze, lies and absolute inbred incompetence that the gave us between 87 and 97. They look like they might know what they are doing but I suspect its all window dressing, PR, and some clever positioning regarding outreach to the internet generation.

The LibDems... god bless 'em... go home and prepare for Government, but not really. It just doesn't seem like its ever going to happen for you no matter how hard you try. I will admit that I had the opportunity to speak to Nick Harvey last year, and I expected so much from meeting a LibDem MP, the peoples champions, the sensible party, the ones who would have vision. I was devastated when I left him, he was just another politician and I had the impression he had no vision and no feel for the mood of the public. I was talking to him about Expenses (surprise) in May 2008 and I can remember him saying that he couldn't understand why people were interested in which brand of toilet paper he bought - in response to a question about receipting to the last penny. He totally missed the point that it wasn't about the things themselves, it was about the accounting. he killed my faith and hope in the LibDems in that meeting.

So I still want something new, I can wish as hard as I like for a Clegg Prime minster-ship but its not going to happen, if Cameron gets in then will the last person leaving England please turn off the lights, which leaves Browns Labour party, a great wounded beast intent on self-digestion, unless Gordon takes the reins and drives Parliament as if the hounds of hell were snapping at their heels for the next year. Gordon is now called upon to sacrifice himself for the public!

Le Cirque European
For UK its as bad as it can get, we have sent the anti Europeans to help build a better Europe. What a waste of an election! We could have sent progressive thinkers who would make the beast work properly and plug the frauds and fix the useless sometimes overbearing legislation. Instead we have a bunch of clowns who think they can secede from the Treaty of Rome from Strasbourg. All they can do is sit and block anything useful happening that might improve English views of Europe. We've sent in the clowns (I will exclude the Greens and LibDems from that label) and now we will watch the Danse macabre that they will perform as they try and sink Europes future. its our kids that will suffer in the world that these people will generate through balking and building roadblocks and dead-ends for progress.

This has been a dire week for UK, the faults in our education systems have been highlighted by the voting of fascists to represent us (on the anniversary of D-Day the culmination of years of effort and fortitude while thousands of brave people died in an effort firstly to survive and then to free Europe from another cancer). Our body politic has engaged in short term thinking yet again, putting parties and self ahead of country, and we haven't had a proper debate of any sort on our future within Europe (or otherwise).

The only people who have had a good week are the MP's who have had a rest from the Expenses scandal bandwagon and Sir Oswald Mosleys ghost.

We get the politics we deserve, and with a mid 30's percentage turnout we have... but this generation of Parliamentarians should include this massive failure on their CV's because they are its primary architects and now they should put their noses the the grindstone and just get on with fixing the system they broke without any more party politiking.

I keep seeing Dave "I wanna be Prime minister" Cameron pleading for a General Election. His buddy Hague was on today singing the same song but claiming that it was not a party political thing, offering to tidy up Parliament a bit and generally trying to appear electable. Actually the Conservatives are over playing this hand and its making them look more and more like the kid who wants to play with the ball and starts stamping his feet and screaming when the others won't pass it to him. I find the Conservative approach to be shallow, populist, and so obviously calculated to a degree that really ought to be making real parliamentarians sick to their stomachs. PR dumbos are writing the text in the hope of damage limitation or making a Public opinion poll point and Politicians of limited vision are regurgitating the scripts at us like semi-trained Channel 4 program announcers.

If they just showed a little honesty and said "well yes, we think we have a chance of winning an election at the moment" at least they might demonstrate that they have learned something from the disgusting mess of Parliamentary dishonesty that is being exposed in an ongoing media process. But no, they are offering a steady, indigestible, diet of more Political lies, half truths, cynicism, and treating the public like they are the blind waiting to follow the one eyed King Cameron the Odious. He might be a decent chap in real life but as a politician he sucks. Wheres the passion Dave, why does it always sound as if there's some Central Office gimp running your mouth and what comes out of it by remote control.

The Conservatives have reverted to type, opportunistic, upper crust purveyors of your better class of propaganda. Old fashioned spivy con-men trying to steal this moment when power has really shifted to the electorate. Small men putting their own petty party politics ahead of the country. People who's thinking hasn't shifted out of the disgraced paradigms they have built into parliament over decades but who are trying to put a populist veneer over the failure of the self-serving systems that riddle the rotten Houses just to gain a vote or two, pathetic! Theres no thinking going on beyond the immediate advantage the Torys can glean from the situation, its cynical manipulation and band wagon jumping spewing forth from the bowels of Central Office. it illustrates how bankrupt of any real ideas the Tories are, and that their list of priorities has "The Conservative Party" a long way ahead of "UK".

I think I might be a little angry with them, not just because they are such transparent victims of their own spin machine but bacause they are such a empty headed and low form of Political life and appear to be totally happy operating at hat level. Do they not have slightly higher expectations of themselves? And these are the sort of people who will put it all right if we will elect them, of course they are, you can make out the sleaze bubbling under that thin crust if you look hard enough. I have a tomato plant that has more upstanding honesty and political awareness than the Tories are showing!

What about Labour? Well its hard to say as they have stayed very very quiet... and for my money thats a much better strategy at the moment. Lay low and hope no-one won't notice just how big a part they had to do with the corruption of our politics.

The Lib Dems seem to be pushing the reform angle very well. The Conservatives are pushing it as well but it just comes across as a marketing ploy from them, they just seem to be mouthing the words without putting any heart and soul into them. The Lib Dems seem to be quite passionate about the degree and depth of reform required.

I have rather liked the long queue of dodgy expenses claims MP's heading for the door (do not re-stand,  do collect £36000 resettlement grant as you Go).  I hope that some of them do get prosecuted, it will make the rest think very hard about how deep the reforms need to be entrenched into basic values of any new look Parliament.

Only the LibDems seem to have cottoned on that its the basic dishonesty of UK politics that is being looked at now. Making manifesto pledges that turn into manifesto lies once power is achieved, the lack of conviction Politics, the lack of backbone in Westminster. If we are to have a clean system its going to have to go right down to the roots and its going to have to be ingrained. The Labour and Conservative parties are too far committed to the old ways of propaganda and vote winning lies to make the change. The Lib Dems might get an opportunity but I'm not sure how invested they are in the current system. Other minor parties are still too parochial to be effective national parties, though I would love to see a parliament of independents (or at least independent thinkers instead of party drones) I'm not sure it would work for UK PLC.

I'm seeing a lot of the usual Westminster products being generated by Politicos at the moment (hot air, holidays, and miserable self-interest), nothing is really happening, the wheels have the illusion of turning but the gerbil is long dead. Its all media sound bites and point scoring, there is no actual activity beyond the Westminster jaw moving up and down. We are on hold, waiting for a politician to have a good idea and do something other than use it to rob the public. Wheres the pressure for change (apart from the LibDems), wheres the meat? Politicians are hijacking the moment for Party Politics is where, spin control, not a genuine radical reformer with the balls to stand up and get the job started rather than just talk about getting it started.

On curent evidence there will be no change in Westminster, or if there is it will be so piddling and trivial as to not disturb the great house of sleeping lawyers from the lifestyle they have become accustomed to. They are talking the talk and walking like ducks but its all done in the style of the old politics, its a lie dressed up for a Saturday night binge drinking session and wheeled out so the public can marvel at it before its put back into the dark cupboard again. If there isn't change then denizens of planet Westminster leave no option but to clear the whole lot of them out at the next election and restart the design of Parliament from scratch. They really don't want to do it themselves, they think plucking out a few rotten and inadequate apples out of the barrel is good enough, its all PR value and not much substance.

So what does it leave, devolution from Westminster, a more federal system where politics is more rooted in the local areas because it is living there and accessible. Maybe. I like it...


House Coups and Cushions
Interestingly my local MP's expenses are now hitting the papers, compared to some of the other claims his are not too bad but his local party leader (Councilor Sean Woodward) must be after his job because in a typically disconnected from reality, thick headed way he pointed out that £80 for 4 cushion covers wasn't excessive in his opinion. How badly can our local gentry Councilors misjudge the general mood.. it was like putting a big red round  target on his MP's cushion covers (3 or 4 pounds at the local soft furnishing shop). I was wondering whether Mr Woodward has his eye on a safe seat, and whether the Political minnows and pygmies of the local party structures are seeing opportunities in their Westminster reps misery. Could we see some helpful shoves towards the cliffs edge, or some accidental holing of sitting MP's below the waterline by erstwhile colleagues? Time to watch your back even if you think you are safe? I do hope so! Lets see some more suicidal behavior from party structures!

Europe
What can you say about Europe, theres an election. Its going to be a sad day for UK politics. The Tories are going to align with a group who essentially represent the inheritors of Adolf Hitlers carpet chewing habit, Labour treat European elections as a loss ahead of time. I dread to think what the results are going to be and say about us as a country. I sincerely hope I am wrong and we elect people who will treat Europe as important and work to improve it for all of us.

So what else is bugging me.
Theres still no acknowledgment of the role played in Parliamentary affairs by the second and third jobs held by members, theres no news on extending the Sittings, Nothing about family member employment.

But most of all is, as I said above, that politicians just don't get it. We are fed up with the sniping, the lessons in how to lie with statistics, the mealy mouthed regurgitation of some political "strategists" ideas, the dishonesty that shows its face every time they vomit up yet more party political manure, the way they think they can appeal to some kind of commonality with the common person. Get off the TV and go and write down some hard proposals for how you are going to clean up Westminster to our satisfaction... then come back to us and ask us whether they are enough (they won't be) and whether we want to send you back into the corner until you get it right.

I want something new to arise, something not tainted by the current system, something that you can believe, something that is not a nasty right wing regurgitation of the 30's BUoF, or mindlessly adherent to failed left wing Stalinism. I want something to believe in, Blair had it when he was elected and then he failed us totally, his radical changes turned out to be fluffy puppy policies that changed nothing, he really did fail a public that hoped for so much. I want something radically different that breaks the mold of British Politics out of this stale self-defeating mold we have now. I want something that puts people first, not party dogma, not self-agrandisment, not personal riches, not religion, and certainly not the needs of the rich or the descendants of Norman Knights. Give it to me now or I will have to go out and make it myself!

And for everyones's sake SHUT UP ABOUT A GENERAL ELECTION CAMERON, its not working and its just a boring whining noise now!!

It’s a lovely day down here on the Costa Del Solent, blue’ish skies, gentle breeze, the gentle drone of Mea Culpa’s and the gentle rustle of hair shirts from MPs in the background. A nice early summers day.

The joy of Euro elections are coming, mixed in with the current scandals they appear to be wide open, UKIP senses it can play on English fears and prejudices. English Democrats are pretty much the same but with the added bonus of hiving off Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Conservatives have already announced that they are marginalising themselves by leaving a centre grouping. Labour doesn't really have a European Election program or not one that makes any impact. The Lib Dems and the Greens appear to be the only choices who are actually going to work for bettering Europe. 

The English to a great extent have always had a problem identifying themselves as Europeans, that pesky 22 miles of water has allowed us to look on Europe with a kind of bemusement at their Continental ways. Europe is a nice place to visit for a few days (OK for the average Brit its a holiday, for the locals its can be a sort of 7th circle of Hell with earning opportunities) but Europe is full of strange ideas and godless republics. Its not for us, we have the Empire, the Commonwealth, and North America. Its a problem that needs leadership and education to solve , in the meantime its like a cancer that eats away at UK's future.

Seeking forgiveness, definitely not just a cynical exercise!

A concerted program of “taking responsibility” is taking place in the shadow of Westminster. It mostly consists of people saying they are guilty and that they hold their hands up to having offended. Many are of course taking a group approach and being jolly good in apologising in behalf of the entire community of MP’s (usually while avoiding any admission of personal wrongdoing which is a neat trick). 

Cameron still pursues his general election plea policy, has this guy never heard about flogging dead horses or is it supposed to cast Gordon Brown in some kind of bad light, the impression I get is that Conservative Central Office are pursuing this because they want him to appear like a guy with zero influence on events, a purely party political outlook, and somewhat forlornly bleating in the land where David is King. If that’s true then congrats Central Office, its working!

The expenses fiasco rumbles on with the indefensible being defended where they are of value to the party, or being told they are very bad people and should go away if they are deemed expendable (e.g. they are dead ducks or retiring ducks in the case of Mr Viggers who was going anyway so could be used as a “look how harsh we are being” flag waving and somewhat cynical exercise). 

The latest turn is that the media are beginning to look at family members employed by MPs and paid by the public, the naughtiness going on on this front is a lot  harder to prove because we have no objective means of measuring how valuable a contribution wives, husbands, sons, daughter, cousins etc have made to the MP’s performance. I don’t believe that their performance is monitored by anyone apart from the employing MP so how do the media go about finding the frauds? Not sure they can, so perhaps they need to look at how well the MP has performed in constituency matters, how many communications responded to, how long to reply, how many support staff so they have apart from the relative, whether they hold down other additional employment.

I would add that there is a nasty surprise coming to many MPs who are thinking of standing down over the revelations. People are beginning to notice the resettlement grant… any MP who stands down or gets defeated gets 6 months pay. That’s going to include the ones who have ripped off the public purse until its shredded and those that have agreed to be sacrificial lambs on Camerons PR exercise (another Viggers reference). Any idea how that’s going to play out when the general public cotton on to it? My guess is that its not going to be pretty and there will be plenty of calls for the grant to be handed back (from ex-MPs with nothing left to lose… that’s really going to play well for the parties that have burned them).

Beware of low falling MP’s

In the meantime we also have the “this witch hunt has to stop” brigade, are we to see a rash of MP’s leaping from high places? Maybe some of them are feeling fragile and if they are then I would strongly suggest they seek professional help (seriously) because whatever the reason a helping hand or good listener will help. But it’s a rod built for their own backs, either they have shown Titanic sized incompetence in which case we have to question their suitability for the job and the party based selection processes that put them in place, or they have been acting like a common pick pocket. Do we feel much sympathy when a burglar or pick pocket complains that its unfair they have been caught… in short no, and MP’s have behaved in much the same way in regard of the expenses system.
 

Free money at the Fee Office

The media is also turning its eye to the fees office as so many of the incompetent ones have said they were strongly encouraged to grab the maximum by staff in the Resources Fees Office. This has to have been policy handed down from the top. When are heads going to roll in this corruption enabling organ… not the body processing the claims but the people at the top who implemented, ran, and encouraged the MP’s behaviour? These employees should surely bear as much responsibility for this scandal as the ones who ruthlessly exploited it.

A manifesto says I love you (but can safely ignore you after the election)

The Party system is already showing cracks and there must be a slight sense of panic in the major parties offices as they see the age of the Independent on the horizon. 

The vested interests of the influence seekers, lobbyists, the rich, and the landed gentry will have no single point of access to influence legislation or taxation systems. We are already seeing the main parties (with the notable exception of the Lib Dems who seem ready to embrace this new wave - I assume the calculation is that it will do their base no great harm) beginning to turn their guns on the prospect of Independents or small parties. They hope the game isn’t up for them but I hope that all they can muster is a delaying action, seeing the end of our de facto 2 party system can only be good for the political system, marginalizing the opportunities for vested interests to inflict policy on the country. To some extent the end for the UKs hereditary and obstructionist old guard was already in sight, by moving the legislation machine to Europe, but it seems that the multinationals have taken their place there. Europe presents a challenge to vested interests because of the shifting alliances and fluid party lines, so the obvious thing to do there is to grease all the palms.

The 2 main parties have existed based on a contract with the public for a long time now, they produce a manifesto of promises, we vote for them based on our evaluation of those promises. But the suitor parties that proffer the marriage manifesto at election time have consistently failed to live up to their end of the bargain for decades now. They promise this and that and we are lucky if they deliver squat,  New Labour came to power on the promise of being sleaze free and radical reforms... I think we are still waiting. The Conservatives come to power on promises of tax cuts and less Government... they have never managed that, all they do is shift taxes around and try and hide them. Do they think that this failure to do what they promise might just have had the long term effect of making us cynical about Politicians?

Cover your Ears Little Englanders he’s using the E word.

Talking of Europe – elections are a comin’. The British National Party is hoping to gain some seats, but in general the supporters of pocket fascists have neither the intellectual or business ability to do anything but spout their 1930’s rhetoric and lets face it Europe knows fascists for what they are and even if they get it their nasty small minded thuggish policies will be blanked at every turn. The UKIP is a pointless exercise in petty thinking, its policies on immigration and leaving Europe should be enough to scare people away from voting for them.

What does leaving Europe get us? Well unemployment, loss of global influence, and a second chance for the Empire. Unemployment because many companies that operate in UK will have to relocate into Europe simply to keep costs down for selling into their main market, plus there are plenty of companies who set up here simply to gain access to the 2^nd largest Single Market in the world of the EU, they won’t stay. Loss of influence, we will no longer have any voice in the affairs of the EU and as the US will realign itself to look to the pacific as its primary sphere of influence the world is just going to sit up and listen when we speak, they might lose the  couple of billion we hand out in development aide. Of course the empire will run to our side… except that those immigration policies might put them off a little bit. UKIP is a busted flush, a final twitch in the corpse of 1950’s UK. Farage might be entertaining but he’s a cyanide pill for the future of this country, one of a few rafts carrying the hopes of the few tat have the much and the undereducated who can’t see further than the Establishment want them to.

You might have guessed that I am pro-European (with some reservations), Federalist, Republican and I’ll make no bones about it, my eyes are firmly fixed on a golden future rather than a rosy past.

The Ayatollahs of Canterbury and York

Dr Rowan Williams and Dr John Sentamu should shut up and keep their views on politics to their front rooms. If they want to tell their congregations how to vote they should stand for election. The BNP are loathsome but at least they haven’t used religion to maintain a completely irrelevant parasitic power structure feeding off of the population for centuries. 

One thing the UK does not need is the kind of religious interference that occurs elsewhere. What will they be giving out advice on next, the CofE approved car manufacturer, CofE seal of Approval wars, CofE certified tax accountants, which books we shouldn't read, which ones should be burnt, perhaps even which heretics should be subject to auto de fe? Of course the Church would never do that. But the Church of England should now be divorced from politics, the lords Spiritual ejected, and the CofE disestablished in favour of a system that espouses any religious input and is a purely rational and temporal political system. 

The men in frocks should keep out of politics before it turns round and bites them in the ass. Any media types out there want to take a look at the expenses claims for the Lords Spiritual?

MP's are still labouring under the misapprehension that they can reform Parliament themselves... well they aren't going to let anyone else have a go so we haven't got a choice at the moment.

They have allowed this corruption of the body politic to exist and in some case to thrive, they think that this Rotten Parliament is a fit instrument to re-imagine itself. they still think that this is pretty much an "expenses" issue. I think they are underestimating the public willingness to pull down the barricades that have been built to keep Parliament as one of the more exclusive sorts of club.

To be honest if they can't clean the House in the year left to this Parliament then we can judge the failure of the politicians properly we will see the depth of their failure and we can judge them based on that, after all how much worse can it get over a year? if we give one or t'other of them a 5 year term now nothing will happen, they will figure that they can ride out any public reaction and in 2015 the chasm of despair the expenses scandal has dropped us into (with regard to faith in Politics) will be forgotten. Let them sweat for a year now, produce what they think are suitable fixes and then present themselves with the new look, fit for purpose Parliamentary system, or not. If the ideas and changes they produce are flawed then we will consign them all to history. Don't let the MP's wriggle out of this opportunity to change Parliament for the better!!

And Cameron still clings to the hope that in a General Election the Tories will be kicked less hard than Labour... Party over Nation politics, I wish he would either just shut up or actually ask some questions that mattered, at the moment you could put a broken record on his bench and let him head off for his Whitsun holidays early (1 day for the public, 10 for MP's).

I keep banging on about it but there are lots of things wrong with the way Parliament does or doesn't work. Family member employment, outside jobs... and to add to the list the horribly slow way that Parliament works and the length of sessions, the archaic system of patronage, the nastiness of the availability to lobbyists.

Parliament works at the speed of a run away Trevithick locomotive, it always has a legislative backlog. So why not streamline the process, why not make the sessions longer and give MP's 30 days annual leave that they use like other people? If they had more time while parliament was sitting they could go home at 5 and not try and cram loads of work into stupid hours. The MPs who have seven directorships and like 20 weeks holidays are going to quibble about that but life's tough, get over it. I can think of at least a dozen people who would be keen to do an MP's job for their money and work the full 52 weeks a year.

Family employment is just wrong, we have no means of objective quality control on these employees, or even knowing if they are doing the job in some cases. Whilst its a convenience for MP's to employ partners, family, or friends we don't know about the quality of quantity of the service given in return for the pay.

The system of patronage is also wrong, the retirement / elevation of failed MPs to the unelected House of Lords was supposed to have ended but it still ticks along nicely in the background. There's plenty of useful Parliamentary experience the ennobled have but is it really whats needed? The right sort of experience, I think the Lords needs converting so that it is a pool of the best expertise available, a non-political house of those big brains and successful people from all walks of life that are willing to stand for election.

A House of Merit would be a better structure, somewhere where non-aligned experts can get elected to, somewhere that they can analyse legislation with an many expert eyes from various fields of endeavor. If the Lords was cleared of the Political bias that's endemic there and people took a dispassionate and technical look at whats presented to it we might get better law.

I'm waiting for the next Duck Island revelation to come out, in a way the papers might be well served by moving the focus whilst the MP's are away on their holidays, and then swinging the searchlight back on them when they get back. There's something like shell shock or revelation overload creeping into the scandals now, a couple of weeks break might be useful... although there's something salaciously tasty about the unveiling of the extravagances and unfettered indulgence.

Talking of Duck Island, Mr Viggers punishment is to stand down at the next election, which he had said he was going to do anyway a good while ago. So that's pretty much a PR dressing exercise.

Sadly the man himself is off in New York at the moment (on Parliamentary business) so he's not been at home (which I think is now a chateau somewhere in France (where the Duck Island is now). I  found a website that claims Mr Viggers is a member of some kind of  transatlantic  power group called "the Pilgrims Society" a society of the powerful. I'm not a conspiracy nut so you can make your own mind up whether a Solicitor from Hampshire was really an ideal candidate for some of the jobs he has held (according to this website) or whether there was some hidden hand. Enjoy your retirement mr Viggers, I'm sure you'll not miss the ungrateful hordes of the great unwashed.

And of course I should say that some of these MP's have served thier constituencies well, they've just been stupid or in some cases criminal about the expenses, but if they are that dumb perhaps they weren't right for the job in the first place.

One simple question should have been in the mind of MP's, how can you justify, as a public servant, claiming more in expenses than some of the people you represent earn in a year?

Look Deep into my PR exercise...... and fall into a deep sleep and believe we are changing things... really.

I saw a number of MP's yesterday on BBC News 24 saying that they had been working for Parliamentary reforms, one said he had been trying for seven years. I have to wonder why they are only creeping out of the woodwork now? I'm not saying that they haven't been trying to reform Parliament, perhaps its just the glassy eye of the media is now turned on them and previously they were speaking into a media vacuum.

The other (more cynical view) is that they have been doing it just quietly enough not to make waves within the discredited system, or they have woken up to the possibility that making these claims is akin to a mad grab for Parliamentary life jacket in these troubled times for sitting MPs.

One I saw and believed was Martin Salter (Reading West), he said everything that I wanted to hear... and then said he was leaving Parliament.

My other worry is that what we are seeing happening now is a massive (and not necessarily co-ordinated) PR exercise, not necessarily to save the MPs who have been hit hardest but to get the situation under Parliamentary control. Until today I would have said that the public were in a strong position to put a veto on any proposals they didn't like, but the PR exercise seems to be directed towards getting Parliament back on the rudder and wresting control out of our hands.

I've seen the following proposals from http://tinyurl.com/r5f6zh:

• MP's who are couples will be obliged to nominate the same main home and will only be able to claim one person's accommodation allowance between them
• All claims will be published quarterly online
• Members will have to be "completely open" with the tax authorities about whether properties are second homes and liable to capital gains tax
• With regards to accommodation, only rent, hotel bills, overnight subsistence, mortgage interest, council tax, utility charges and insurance will be allowed
• Mortgage claims must be accurate, for interest only and on continuing loans
• A clear test of "reasonableness" will be applied to all claims by the Department of Resources in an effort to "tighten up" allowances
• Claims which are the subject of any doubts will be refused with no opportunity of appeal

Its still a patch not a solution, and its still the same people in Department of Resources who apparently got it so badly wrong last time.

They don't address family members working for MP's, a totally unaccountable income stream as Derek Conway discovered (and who is still a serving MP regardless of effectively giving his son an "allowance" from the public).

There's no distinction between some required accommodation e.g. an MP who lives in Bodmin and needs a flop in London and the MP who has 5 homes and buys a 6th to make use of the allowance.

Reasonableness,,,, well that is a phrase that's going to mean a hundred different things to a hundred people. Its the sort of loose language that is a bear trap in waiting for future MP's. Its not good enough by half.

No ban on second jobs, no ban on having any master except the public which means that MPs can still be treating the public to a half time job for full time pay.

No statement that both Houses will be fully complaint with the Freedom of Information Act,  that's a basic requirement and should be embedded into the foundation of any new look Parliament.

There are no punishments, the only restraining factor is the publication of expenses... whether that's in the 38 categories form or whether its a "by the penny" listing of receipts we will have to wait and see. If the current Parliamentarians get control of the process my bet would be its a broad brush strokes accounting e.g. £50 on food rather than £30 1 bottle Bollinger, £20 for a dish of beluga caviar.

If there was a punishment system which meant that an MP who was guilty of abusing the system was automatically ejected from Party and a by-election was called then the Parties themselves would start to take responsibility. But I think the parties are far more interested in the acquisition of power than they are in taking responsibility for anything.

Retreating from the High Ground  -Rewards for failure... no its not the banks
The Honours system is a disgusting monstrosity of a creature, the only saving grace is the recent addition of the Peoples honours. To elevate Mr Speaker Martin to the House of Lords for his failure to control the House of Commons is a real fine signal to send up after the fearless charge of the 1st Parliamentary Volunteer Cavalry  up High Moral Ground Hill in the aftermath of the banking collapse. The high minded screams of "no bonuses for failure" might ring a little more hollow if Parliament does exactly the same thing!

And we haven't even scratched the surface regarding the House of Slumbering Lords...

What do these proposals show us?
I think they show us that there is an effort going on to try and wrest control back from the public on this issue and place it back in the chamber. PR gurus and spin doctors are working overtime to control the damage, Having claimed a few scalps and upped the circulation figures the papers seem to be losing focus a little, the fourth estate is smirking quietly and patting itself on the back.

I think it also shows us that parliaments heart is not in any reform, they are going dark and hoping to slip just enough wiggle room and blandness into any proposals so that it will look as if they have tried. we need the likes of Mr Salter and Mr Carswell to be there and pushing for RADICAL change, not the tinkering around the edges that the current proposals represent.

And still they look for political advantage
Cameron still looks for a Political advantage and a general election even though he is part of the problem, he hasn't managed his party or his parliamentary budget. At a time when they should be working together to sort out the clear and present problem he is trying to grab a measly popularity competition. This old Etonian has learned nothing from the last few weeks and has dropped back into the mould of the old Politics quicker than an MP can say "Second Mortgage", Sort out the House before you ask the public to pass a verdict, do some honest work to radically alter both the House and how your own party selects its candidates. NO MORE OLD SCHOOL TIES PARACHUTED INTO CONSTITUENCIES!!! Get local candidates if you can find them.

I really find the political calculations that are going on at the moment to be quite repugnant and to reveal the soul of the cynical party machines that are behind them. If they can't sort out the problems with Parliament before the next general Election then none of the current cabal deserve re-election, and if they can't sort it out in a year then does anyone really think that they are going to feel motivated to get on with it when they have 5 years before they face the public?

1. Go to Post Office, register national Political Party,
2.. Write a manifesto,
3. Find 600 odd friends who all live in a different constituency,
4. Find bucketfuls of dedication, enthusiasm, zeal, and passion,
5. Find a few people who can provide setting up cash.

Hmm looks right. . save UK with a nice shiny new reforming party.

Wonder what I'll do after lunch?

It seems that some of the Twitterati and Tuttle clubbers are talking up a new power in UK Politics. If I was the established parties I think I might well be quite worried!