The link to the story is HERE.
If true, it means David Cameron will have to show whether his newly found conversion to open government and decency amongst Tory MPs is confined only to the old guard and those Tories he does not get on with or whether it extends to his inner circle.
6 comments:
oh dear
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7400952.stm
All the major parties are horribly tainted. No excuses, no wheedling out of it. That just makes it worse.
Are the two the same ? One involves tax avoidance on a grand scale, one is getting your house renovated.
I am happy to be corrected, but I have yet to read a revelation about a Lib Dem "flipping" houses for tax purposes.
All the parties at Westminster are culpable. The expenses system has been in place since 1983 and has become more corrupted since then. How many questions did Ashdown, Kennedy, Campbell and Clegg make at PMQs regarding expenses reform? How many Bills have been put forward to reform the system, or whatever it takes to do so?
Scottish MPs have the least workload, since devolution, but many claim the highest expenses, notably Charles Kennedy.
The whole of the UK Parliament is institutionally Anglophobic and no more party so, than the Liberal Democrats.
In my view every MP with an English constituency is a traitor to his/her constituents.
Every politician promoting English regions is certainly a traitor to the English because regions are the most unpopular option for England's governance as every poll shows.
The English are fed up with not only being ignored, but their views suppressed by British politicians. Expenses are just the final straw.
Politicians think they can deflect public anger by talking up democratic reform. They have all forfeited the right.
Westminster polticians are a disgrace and have brought parliament into disrepute. We need a general election to clear them out before any reforms are started.
just read this
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/liberal-democrat-mps-expenses/
There are some cringeworthy examples of coining it in from the system. And some very sharp practice that ought to be criminal.
It's best to hold your hands up to it and see it for what it is because the more you excuse it or point to others as 'worse', the more cringeworthy it becomes. Please don't try to defend the indefensible. The libdems are the least unlikeable of the main players currently but the expenses farago and their mealy-mouthed excuses, just like the others, is putting them in the same light.
£55K is a not insubstantial amount.
I think this is more a question of hypocrisy than anything else. Not sure what the current position of the Tory party on tax avoidance (not evasion) is, but most Tory supporters accept that people will arrange their affairs (in a legal manner) so as to avoid paying tax. In the case of companies they even owe a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to do so.
In the case of Osborne, if he has used a perfectly legal provision of the tax legislation (lovingly crafted by Gordon Brown over many years) to avoid paying capital gains tax then good for him.
The difference is that Labour's stance (and probably the Lib Dems) is that corporations should not take legal steps to minimise their tax bill. As such, it is hypocritical for individuals to do the same in relation to capital gains.
Post a Comment