It’s sad to say but I am obsessive about waste products – I recycle everything I can, metals, cardboard, plastics, paper, glass, fabrics and anything else I think there could be a use for. If the council won’t take it away, I lobby them (our local council must be sick to the back teeth of hearing me going on about the fact that their refusal to take glass isn’t because there isn’t a need, it’s because people are forced to take it to recycling centres). In Cornwall, they are really enlightened about such stuff and take it all – glass, cardboard, the lot. Rah rah for them I say.
That’s why today I have been flabbergasted to hear the publication of our members of parliament’s expenses for the first time. I have heard that an average member of parliament in this country claims £120,000 of expenses every year, on top of their salary. Now I do have some sympathy with politicians, poor beleaguered souls that they are have a pretty miserable existence where they are scrutinised all the time and not just for their public actions, for their private lives too. That makes it so tough that only the most ambitious of people can put up with the attention – to me that says that we end up with less-good politicians because the only ones who are prepared to stick with it regardless of press intrusions into their private lives are the ones who simply don’t care about that and want the glory regardless.
Anyway, today was an interesting one – the MP for one of the Brent constituencies (can’t remember whether it was east or west) claims £20,000 per year for accommodation ‘close to the House of Commons’ - this is intended for MPs who need to buy/rent expensive accommodation in London because they can’t travel back to their constituencies after late-night sittings - while his constituency is only 5-6 miles or so from our centre of parliament. His neighbouring MP (again Brent, either east or west), claims nothing for being close to the Commons. Good for her I say.
Our esteemed leader (not) Mr Bliar claims only around the £80k mark but as it was pointed out he has a rather splendid house, provided by the Government, just a stone’s throw from ‘the office’.
The best though? The MP for I think Morden…….who claims more than £40k a year for stationery and postage (not including the cost of someone’s time to actually type the letters). A little look at a UK stationery suppliers tells me that is somewhere in the region of 78,000 letters can be written, enveloped up and posted first class post for that money. And do you know what? I didn’t even look for a cheap supplier – I just plucked a name I knew out and looked at their website. Probably that means the money would go a fair bit further than the 78,000 letters of my estimation. Now this person must be the most enthusiastic of MPs - most would find it difficult to write that many letters in a year – they’d never have time to attend the Commons or constituency meetings or charity dos or anything else – they’d be there, with their PC typing away as fast as their little fingers could carry them or talking furiously into their Dictaphones or whatever.
Oh boy, am I glad we live in the electronic age – maybe the use of email would give the Chancellor a pot of money so he didn’t ‘have’ to raise taxes again. Maybe by persuading some MPs to go home to their own beds at night we could have more money for schools or the NHS or whatever other good cause. Or maybe not – maybe MPs don’t have to live by the same rules as the rest of us. I wonder how the Tax Man would feel if I started to claim these sorts of things…….
So, my photo tonight is tipping my hat to waste – it takes only one tree to make a thousand matches (and paper) but it only takes one match to burn a thousand trees as the Stereophonics so eloquently put it.
Oh and a pyromaniac's credit to DM, ever willing to light my fire!
