MP expenses explained

Bruce 22 March 2015 0 Edit This

X

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

Powered by WP Greet Box WordPress Plugin

An MPs job is unique in that they have two places of work, Westminster and their constituency. So most of them need two homes and to travel between them a lot. In addition they usually need to employ staff to handle the huge workload generated by their constituents and to do the research on issues necessary to keep our democracy vibrant. So they need a very comprehensive expenses system to pay them back for all the money they have to spend in doing their job.

There have been two recent expenses systems for doing this and it is incredibly important to understand the difference. The generous old system which ran up to 2009 and the very strict system that has run ever since.

It is a fact that our MPs are very badly paid for the level of person needed to do the job and the huge hours and commitment that the job takes. MPs live and breathe their work and tend to be either working or sleeping, yet they get paid half what a good GP or headmaster gets. I have written this article about MP pay.

MPs pay has been kept down artificially for political reasons. Every time they get a pay rise everybody complains. All the media have a huge and unjustified whinge. So the old expenses system was deliberately over generous to compensate. It was a way of giving MPs the money they deserved without the press indulging in small minded attacks. We got into this situation because of our national epidemic of socialist envy. It is not politically correct to succeed in this country.

Unfortunately some MPs took it too far and abused the old system. They got greedy. For instance Ed Balls flipped his second home three times in two years and made dodgy expenses claims for it. This made him very rich indeed at the expense of the taxpayer. Then the Telegraph found out what was going on and there was a huge scandal. Every MP was thoroughly investigated and only 6 out of 650 were found to have committed criminal fraud in order to enrich themselves. They were:

• Elliot Morley (Labour). Claimed parliamentary expenses for a mortgage that had already been repaid. Morley was duly prosecuted and on 7 April 2011 pleaded guilty in the Crown Court at Southwark to two counts of false accounting, involving over £30,000. On 20 May 2011, he was sentenced to 16 months’ imprisonment.
• David Chaytor (Labour).  Claimed nearly £13,000 in mortgage expenses on a home on which the mortgage had already been paid. On 3 December 2010 he pleaded guilty to charges of false accounting and he was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment on 7 January 2011.
• Jim Devine (Labour). Submitted expense claims for a company that never existed. Prosecuted under the Theft Act 1968. On 10 February 2011 he was found guilty on two counts of false accounting (relating to false claims for a total of £8,385).  On 31 March 2011 Devine was sentenced to 16 months imprisonment.
• Eric Illsley (Labour). Claimed over £10,000 for council tax in four years although he was charged £3,966 for his Band C property in Lambeth, south London, in this period. He regularly submitted claims for £200 a month, which meant that he did not have to submit receipts.On 19 May 2010, Illsley was charged with three counts of false accounting. On 11 January 2011, he pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court. He was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment on 10 February 2011.
• Margaret Moran (Labour). Moran’s (Luton South) claims for expenses 2004–05 were £73,198 higher than Luton North MP Kelvin Hopkins. On 6 September 2011 the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced that Moran would face 21 criminal charges, 15 of false accounting and six charges of forgery. In April 2012, after receiving evidence from a number of psychiatrists, the judge determined that Moran was not fit to plead. On 13 November 2012 a jury found she had committed the acts alleged. In December 2012, she was sentenced to a two-year supervision and treatment order, the judge commenting that although some might feel she had “got away with it”, the court had acted “in accordance with the law of the land and on the basis of the evidence that it hears.”
• Denis MacShane (Labour). Submitted 19 false invoices “plainly intended to deceive” the parliamentary expenses authority. On 11 July 2013 the Crown Prosecution Service announced that MacShane would be charged with false accounting under the Theft Act 1968, involving the creation of £12,900 of fake receipts. On 18 November 2013 he pleaded guilty to false accounting at the Old Bailey, and on 23 December 2013 was jailed for six months.

In addition there were the forced resignation of the following Labour ministers:

• Jacqui Smith announced that she would step down as Home Secretary after the European elections, but would contest her seat at the next election. Lost her seat at the subsequent general election.
• Hazel Blears announced on 3 June that she would step down as Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.
• Tony McNulty resigned from his position as Minister for Employment during the cabinet reshuffle on 5 June 2009. Lost his seat at the subsequent general election.
• Geoff Hoon left his position as Secretary of State for Transport during the cabinet reshuffle on 5 June 2009, in order for him to spend more time on European and international issues with him being considered a possible candidate as the next British member of the European Commission. Did not stand at the 2010 election.
• Kitty Ussher resigned as Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury on 17 June, after only 8 days in the position, following details of avoiding capital gains tax being published. Did not stand at the 2010 election.

As a result of all the above, on 20 May 2009, the creation was announced of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), intended to manage Members’ expenses at an “arm’s length” from the House, ending the historical self-policing by MPs of their expenses. IPSA is responsible for: setting the level of and paying MPs’ annual salaries, drawing up, reviewing, and administering the MPs’ allowances scheme, providing MPs with publicly available information relating to taxation issues, preparing the MPs’ code of conduct relating to financial interests and determining the procedures for investigations. It is all powerful.

The new expenses system is very strict, some say excessively so. It is also amazingly transparent. Every penny claimed in expenses can now be seen by everyone on earth! All you have to do is click this link. Once again, though, we face press stupidity, they complain when an MP claims 10p or 20p for a valid expenses item. Missing the fact that the pennies mount up and that the MP would be out of pocket if they didn’t claim back what they had spent in doing their job.

Useful memes for the election. Part 2

Bruce 24 March 2015 0 Edit This

X

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

Powered by WP Greet Box WordPress Plugin

This particular election is enlivened by an alphabet soup of parties who are going to get through a fortune in lost deposits. One hopes the financial damage will reduce their ardour somewhat. Engaging with the supporters of other parties on social media, there is a great difference between them. As you might expect UKIP supporters tend to be uneducated, with poor grammar and very little knowledge of how the world works. SNP tend to verge towards fanaticism and have no interest in facts or the truth, they have seen Braveheart and that is all the education they need. Presumably Salmond will arrange for it to be aired again on voting eve. Labour supporters can often be well schooled, with letters after their names, but they are severely lacking in critical faculties and independent thought. They are brainwashed with a false dogma that has failed every single time that it has been applied. Currently in Venezuela and Cuba. But they lack the mental horsepower to understand this.

I posted 19 great memes in the first article which you can find HERE (click). All these memes are standardised at 650 across, if you need a different size use Irfan View. These memes can only do good if plenty of people see them, so please use them widely in the social media, websites etc. The least they can do is to make people think.

Firstly the truth about UKIP voters. Spend any time on social media and you know that this is so.

Then there is the truth about how Great Britain got into such a bad position in 2009/10. It was Gordon Brown who trashed the economy (not the Bankers as the lefty BBC claim). And now some people are soft enough in the head to want to give Labour the keys back. When it is 100% certain that they will trash the country again. They always do.

The left make a lot of noise about food banks. Missing out the obvious that free food is going to be popular and the people giving it away don’t have to pay for it. So the threshold to being a recipient is fairly low. Basically they just free up funds to buy booze, cigarettes, lottery tickets, Sky TV etc. This press clipping is a typical food bank user.

Now one about the fundamentals of Labour philosophy. Basically driven by bitter envy they seek to extort money from successful people to give to unsuccessful people. Listen to any speech and this is what they say.

And in the same vein.

Osborne is an amazing chancellor. Certainly the best in my lifetime. To deliver strong growth and a huge increase in employment whilst our largest trading partner (the EU) is financially depressed, whilst at the same time halving the deficit, is quite simply staggering. Asked five years ago I would have thought it impossible. His achievement have no historic parallel. Remember also that Gordon Brown increased the gap between the rich and the poor, whilst George Osborne has reduced it.

And here is just one of his achievements.

And, of course, the Conservatives are starting to get benefits under control:

We are very lucky the unions chose Miliband to be Labour leader. There were far less inept candidates available. Certainly the accurate public perception of him is that he is unfit for the job. Just ask yourself how many Labour candidates will put him on their election leaflet.

Also here is something that needs a lot more publicity:

Now for the absolute truth about UKIP.

Margaret Thatcher left us with many fantastic quotes. This one has been shown to be 100% true time after time.

Because the left are intellectually bankrupt they usually resort to class warfare. And they are always wrong, there is only one Etonian in the cabinet. Or hypocritical, most of the shadow cabinet come from middle class backgrounds and many had private education. So this is good to throw in their faces:

The Conservatives aren’t just good on the economy. They have reversed the huge slide in educational standards that happened under Labour.

And, of course, the Conservatives are the only party who can and will give you an EU referendum.

When it comes to the NHS remember that Labour were planning on cutting spending had they won the 2010 election. The Conservatives ring fenced spending, then increased it. The NHS is only safe with the Conservatives.

People have short memories and many have forgotten just how execrable the last Labour government was. Here is a reminder:

And if anyone ever wants to discuss the deficit this is a very useful graph.

Labour are making a big noise about tax avoidance. They have only just discovered that other people do it. Because many of the shadow cabinet have great wealth as a result of tax avoidance. And it is something that George Osborne has been trying to stop for more than 4 years.

And finally, here is how UKIP make their policies.

Please use these widely!

I would like to thank the creators of all of these.

The spooks own you

Bruce 25 March 2015 0 Edit This

X

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

Powered by WP Greet Box WordPress Plugin

You might think that you can sleep more soundly because of our intelligence services. That they are out there snooping on all the nasty Jihadists and Putinites. And you would be very wrong. Because our intelligence services don’t spy on our enemies, they spy on all of us.

We have three main intelligence services. MI5 “The Security Service”, at Thames House in London, works within the UK to protect us from terrorism and espionage. Most of their leg work is done by a department of the police called Special Branch. MI6 “The Secret Intelligence Service”, on Albert Embankment in London, spies on the whole of the rest of the world and tells our leaders what is going on. GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) is at Cheltenham and listens to all the world’s electronic messages.

It is very important to realise that all three services work with our “allies” including very dodgy ones such as Israel. We work incredibly closely with the USA, sharing just about everything with them, including working practices and major programmes. One of the biggest bases for spying on us is RAF Menwith Hill in Yorkshire. This is a USA base, it is not subject to British law, they can do anything they want in there. And they do. They are connected to the British telephone system with several hundred thousand telephone lines, so they can listen to every telephone call or internet usage in Britain.

It is also very important to realise that all three services are riddled with freemasonry. The old MI5 logo was a freemason pyramid with a freemason eye on the top of it. This means that they have sworn strict blood oaths and acted out hocus pocus playlets to look after freemasonry and fellow freemasons before all else. Which means they are obliged to use their enormous power and knowledge to advance the causes of freemasonry before the causes of the government and the citizens, they have sold their souls. Several very senior MI5 staff were on the Elm Guest House paedophile list. And it is no surprise that inquiries into establishment paedophilia always fail. Our all powerful intelligence agencies make sure that they do.

You might be wondering how the intelligence services can physically listen to everything that all of us do. The answer is that they use vast arrays of very powerful computers that have software well in advance of anything known of in the civil world. I was told by an insider way back in 1984 that they had the system set up to activate on the word “picket”. As soon as the miners strike started this completely overwhelmed the system and crashed it. Imagine what they can do now 30 years later. And then they can manually target individuals. Say a Islamist, or a green energy protester, or someone who writes critical things about the intelligence services!

They are incredibly good at what they do. Another insider told me, just after the Falklands war in 1982, that they had been listening, in real time, to everything that General Galtieri, the rest of his government and his senior commanders were saying. Despite all these people having the best possible countermeasures in place to prevent this.

Nowadays their spy hardware is embedded into the hardware and/or software of just about every electronic device everyone on earth uses. Just recently it was revealed that they had hacked the SIM chips in every mobile phone. This is just the tip of the iceberg. They can watch you inside your home by using your webcam, even if you have disabled it. The same goes for the cameras on your smartphone. And you will never know that they are doing it. They can use your computer and telephone microphones to listen to everything, even when those devices are not being used by you. And they can read everything you type on any computer or phone, they can follow every gesture you make with a touch screen or a mouse. Not only can they do this, they are doing it. When the Russians discovered how great our technical spying capabilities were they replaced every computer in the Kremlin with a typewriter.

Anyone who thinks they can use the Deep Web, the Dark Web, Tor, proxy servers, encryption etc to avoid detection is an idiot. Our intelligence services can see straight through all of these. In fact it is where they are most likely to look. They are even inside your video games.

It is not just anything that you generate, they also know everything you receive and everything you read or look at. They know your porn habits. In addition to RAF Menwith Hill there are other listening bases. RAF Cleave is GCHQ Bude. Here they listen to lots of satellite communications traffic, but their big job is intercepting the undersea communications cables. They are reading your emails before you are. If you are researching this subject it is also worth looking at RAF Edzell and RAF Boulmer as well.

The intelligence services are governed by law and there is parliamentary oversight. This is a joke, they do exactly what they want and break the law all the time, systematically. The politicians know that they do this and they like it, because it increases the politicians’ power over us citizens. Occasionally details of their illegal activities emerge and precisely nothing happens. Your mainstream media might report it in a desultory fashion, but they know what side their bread is buttered on. So everything is quickly forgotten.

The power these agencies have is incredible and anyone who says that they don’t use and misuse it is deluded. They can finish most politicians’ careers overnight. Or advance the career of a (freemason) politician who they favour (the list of names is obvious). They can make share prices go up and down. They can decide what tomorrow’s headlines will be. They can and do make people disappear. They can vastly reduce or increase the number of people who read this article. The truth is that we don’t really have any real freedoms any more. We are owned by the spooks.

Your big hero in all of this is Edward Snowden. By spying on the spies he revealed that our governments and their agencies have illegally taken away our rights and freedoms on an industrial scale. With programmes like Five Eyes, PRISM, Tempora, MUSCULAR, Turbine, QUANTUMHAND,  MonsterMind and many more they spend many billions of pounds of your money spying on you. The scale is breathtaking. They now record and store the entire internet, every single keystroke, so they can go back and look for stuff they missed in real time. Your news media isn’t telling you the truth, for obvious reasons. But use the programme names I have given you on Google and you will soon dig out some of what they are up to. And nothing is done about it. Our politicians are complicit in the illegality. The people you vote for to look after you are part of a huge conspiracy to do the exact opposite.

The intelligence agencies use “terrorism” as their excuse for taking away your rights and freedoms and for acquiring immense power over you. Because gaining power is what the intelligence agencies main goal is. They can decide whether you will succeed or fail in life and there is nothing that you can do to know that they are doing it or to stop them. You think you are a free agent in a democratic society and in reality this is all an illusion. The spooks own you.

——————————————————————————————————-

I wrote an earlier article on this subject: The state is not your friend(click link to open)

Nemtsov killed, Putin wins

Bruce 5 March 2015 1 Edit This

X

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

Powered by WP Greet Box WordPress Plugin

Firstly the Putin propagandists are trying to talk down the importance of Nemtsov. As usual they are lying. He had been First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia 17 March 1997 – 28 April 1998 and Deputy Prime Minister of Russia 28 April – 28 August 1998. When he died he was co-chair of the Republican Party of Russia – People’s Freedom Party (RPR-PARNAS), a registered political party. So he was one of the top political figures in Russia. Before Putin’s coup d’etat in 1998/9 Nemtsov was a very likely candidate for the Presidency. And if Putin’s gangster clique had been removed from power then Nemtsov was among the very most likely to take over.

Of course the average Russian citizen doesn’t see that. Russian media is in a constant accolade to the amazing Vladimir Putin whilst opposition figures are barred from coverage.

Nemtsov was a thorn in Putin’s side because he was anti corruption and pro democracy. But the biggest problem was that he was the focal point and the main campaigner against Putin’s war in Ukraine.

We see a pattern here, Chechnya and Ukraine. Both wars created by Putin, both wars meeting resistance at home. Both times this domestic opposition encountering state violence against them. Putin is ruthless against his own people when they don’t agree with him.

Nemtsov was assassinated in the centre of Moscow, right next to the Kremlin, in an area tightly controlled by Putin’s security services. This itself was a huge message. Letting everyone know who has the power and that nobody is safe unless they conform to the will of Putin.

So let’s look at who the message of the assassination was aimed at:

Kremlin insiders. The gangsters who run Russia and extract its wealth for themselves consist of just over 100 ex FSB Putin cronies from St Petersburg. But Putin has to keep them all happy and onside. Already one of them, Roman Tsepov, has been killed by the state, poisoned with radioactive material, just like Alexander Litvinenko was. Recently there has been much talk of this clique being very unhappy about Putin’s Ukraine war, which nobody except Putin wants. Now Putin has brought this clique in line, they know that it would be very unhealthy to voice any disapproval over Putin’s actions. They don’t want to become the next Nemtsov or the next Tsepov.

The Russian people. They really are mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed bullshit. They really believe that Putin is a hero because they are told this many times every day. But just now quite a few of their sons are coming home in body bags. No only that, thanks to Putin’s economic incompetence, the collapsed oil price and Western sanctions the Russian economy is in freefall. Hard time lie ahead. Putin, due to his propaganda, has a near 90% approval rating. Much as Hitler and Stalin once did. He needs to keep this. So he can use Nemtsov’s killing as a demonstration of what a great leader he is. Blame it on the CIA or the Ukrainians to justify his actions.

Ukrainians. The message is that the gloves are off, the days of hybrid warfare are over. Putin is going to take what he wants and nobody is going to stop him.

The former Soviet states. Armenia;  Azerbaijan; Belarus; Estonia; Georgia; Kazakhstan; Kyrgyzstan; Latvia; Lithuania; Moldova; Tajikistan; Turkmenistan; Ukraine; Uzbekistan. Here the message is that history has been rolled back, the Kremlin is back in charge. There might be some debate in the Baltics but everyone now knows not to stand up against Putin.

NATO. Here we see brinkmanship. Putin is saying that all treaties and agreements are null and void (see the Budapest Memorandum) and that he is just going to get on with taking what he wants and that he isn’t afraid to escalate right up to nuclear if they try to stop him. He really is a rabid dog.

The Nemtsov murder tells all these people exactly where they stand. Putin is a ruthless psychopath who will act without planning. Although Russia is economically insignificant in world terms and isn’t really much of a military power (except for the nukes) Putin is throwing his weight around like he owns the place and nobody seems to want to stop him.

————————————————————————-

Earlier articles in this series by Bruce Everiss, click on the highlighted text to see them:

Is Putin the worst thing to happen to Russia?

What should we do about Putin?

The Boris Nemtsov murder

Putin’s killed opponents

Putin timeline to power