Justifying Theft by Austin Mitchell

Guest Post:
An excellent piece on MP expenses by The Lone Voice . . . .


In The Grauniad, Austin Mitchell explains how MP's need your money, yet he and most of the 646 vermin infesting the House of Commons just don't get it and boy does Austin piss the commentators off.

You see - I shall explain it for Austin - we the public pay them a wage, some £64 thousand quid for a back bench MP and even more for those who take up front bench positions and yet they think that they are worthy of picking our pockets for expenses to cover everything. In fact they see it as a God given right of the high office they hold.

They are public employees, paid by us and supposed to represent our interests and needs.

Mitchell jokes:

In fact, in my own case it hasn't. I discovered on looking through my claims that my wife is insane and has learned nothing from the row (and the jokes) produced by her claims for Branston Pickle and a bottle of Laphroaig. She has claimed £75.99 for a gleaming chromium kettle. A beautiful object, but certain to annoy people in Grimsby where a kettle is a kettle. Indeed, the last one I bought there cost about a fiver.

The kettle joins another claim of £438.65 for a replacement shower and £4,100 for a new boiler, both of which replaced comparatively new counterparts which went disastrously bust. Yet it's no use explaining to constituents that my inability to take a bath or a shower left me so smelly that no one would sit next to me in the public accounts committee.

Therein is the problem, most of us, those lucky enough to still have jobs have to buy our kettles from our wages. As for getting £4,100 for a new boiler, well we pray we are insured and unlike Austin can not shaft the taxpayers for a new one; or a new shower or kettle come to that.

The same argument go's for utility bills, we have to pay them. Electric, gas, council tax and no tapping the taxpayers for free money to cover them; it all comes out of our wages.

Food is another £400 a month allowance granted to MP's, which explains the lardy shape of many MP's. Yet many on low wages/benefits after paying all their bills and rent/mortgage can but dream of having a sodding food allowance that big. Maybe Mitchell might ask himself why so many people frequent the low end food stores?...

Alas we get no mortgage interest help, no cover for ground rent (also on his expenses which can be viewed here), no help with the cushy pension at the end of it; in fact fuck all is what we get compared to an MP.

The guidelines, written by MP's and others on the gravytrain, for the benefit of those say that things claimed are supposed to wholly, necessarily and exclusively for the performance of the MP's duties. A meaningless term that has come to mean this:

the MP can get whatever he/she wants and you unwashed plebs an proles will pay for it.

I have argued that in the main, most of our MP's provide piss poor value for money. They are not a profession like say doctors or teachers, they sit no exam to enter The Commons and yet earn a wage that most can only dream about. Even many professionals look at MP's earnings with envy.

They also get more time off than the rest of us in holidays.

Indeed lets have a look at 2 more things we have helped Mr Mitchell with, that he deems wholly, necessarily and exclusively for the performance of his duties as an MP. 

• A washing machine, cost £478. 
• Home Insurance, cost £109.79.

Why in the name of all that is holy, should I have to pay for an MP's home insurance? No one pays mine.

Oh the smug feeling of self entitlement comes across, I was waiting for him to utter the immortal words "Don't you know who I am?!".

The only good thing to come out of this, is that Austin has shown the belief that MP's consider themselves better than us, somehow deserving of all they can steal to be completely correct.

After claiming back all the utility bills, food and everything else I would imagine that your average MP is left with most of their money sitting in the bank.

They are paying less in overheads in real terms than workers bringing home £200 a week.

So take a look at the MP's. They are remote, out of touch, refusing to answer e-mails, censoring comments on their websites (if they even allow them), even their letters are often poorly drafted and little more than Pravda style party wank-speak, yet MP's still want our votes and wonder why many think a pox on all your houses and do not vote.

Now all of this theft would not be so bad if the MP's actually did a half decent job, but they don't. What is moreI can prove it as well. If they did, would we be in debt and with a nation falling apart at the seams?

So ask yourself this, are they worth even a fraction of what we pay them?

Hell if rather than being in debt, we had a trade surplus and decent standard of living we might turn a blind eye to the stink of ordure from on high. Instead the finances are fucked, millions are out of work and the infrastructure is falling apart, everything from the NHS to supplying the army with equipment is screwed.

Then for an MP to joke he is getting the same treatment as a terrorist, "under extraordinary rendition and subject to regular doses of waterboarding.", oh if only. The only problem being is I and millions of others would love to waterboard you thieves, right up until the bubbles stop.

This odious little man should try living on benefits for a while, see how he copes with no savings and just a single JSA payment every two weeks. He should try the humiliation of signing on and looking for non existent jobs. He should try juggling the bills like so many, wondering which ones to put off till next month.

Austin you and most of the 646, I can sum up in one word:

CUNTS