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On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 08:06:55PM +0100, dave wrote: > > I've been thinking about the travel problem for a while, before the > expenses issue came up. I work every other week in Porstmouth. I could > rent a place to stay, but I can only claim for the days I'm actually > there, and then I only get the tax back (ie. the cost is tax deductible > for 5/14 of the time). But I digress. > > My rail fair is around £50. It is normally £65 return to London. The > trains, particularly coming back on a Friday are always full beyond > capacity, often with people standing all the way from Paddington to > Exeter. We have the most expensive railways in Europe and the worst. > IF, very big IF, you can book far enough in advance then returns to London are about £30 from Devon. For MPs from Penzance I would hope they fly. > I suspect that many MPs travel to London on the train. It always struck > me that if MPs paid their fares out of their own pocket, that the over > priced fares would start to come down. I expect that they all travel > first class, which I'm sure is very comfy. They won't have to book ahead > as the tax payer will pay whatever it costs, so they may be on tickets > that cost hundreds of pounds. If you've every wondered who pays the > ridiculous top rate ticket prices, the answer is "people who don't have > to pay for the tickets themselves". > :) MPs are allowed to travel any class by any means within certain stipulations http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8039590.stm http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/M05.pdf > > When questioned about the sky-high prices, MPs and their friends the > privatised rail companies always say that you can get really good deals > if you book ahead. But clearly they don't. I can't always either. I was > ill last year and had to cancel a week away at the last minute. But can > I claim the cost of the unused ticket (just the tax, you understand). No. > > Perhaps one day MPs will follow the same rules that they apply to us, > the mugs who pay their wages. I want my MP to have enough money to get his work done. And I would like the MP to be sufficiently rewarded to prevent bribery and corruption. But there are plenty of people with enough common sense to do that. BUT (especially as this is a LUG): - It is easy enough to publish expenses on the web (no credit card numbers, no actual addresses but certainly post codes and the names of shops) If the MP believes that the expense was wholly incurred for parliamentary business then there is no reason NOT to publish. If the MP would be embarrassed to publish then arguably it should not be incurred in the first place. - WHY do the MPs have to visit Westminster? Why not have some decent fibre-optics cables and set up good video-conferencing facilities. Voting can be electronic. At least a side effect would be improving communications infrastructure for others. - £3-5000 for computers is a bit high: appropriate use of open source should cut that. Certainly the French Parliament does. -- Henry Photocopies or faxes of my signature are not binding. This email has been signed with an electronic signature in accordance with subsection 7(3) of the Electronic Communications Act 2000. Digital Key Signature: GPG RSA 0xFB447AA1 Tue May 19 08:14:24 BST 2009
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