Annual MPs' Allowance trauma

The annual publishing of MPs' allowance expenditure is always a tiresome one for Parliamentary staff. The meedja (who should and do actually know better) and the blogosphere tend to throw around terms like "pocketing," or infer that our elected representatives have spent the lot on fine wines, hookers, dancing girls, and good times.

Actually, this money is slightly less excitingly used for stuff like staff pay, postage, stationery, rent on constituency offices, heating and lighting for said offices, et cetera. 

So a big thumbs up from everyone at Westmonster to the Brothers Flack and Whittle of Unite the Union for issuing a press release calling for "Thursday [to] be a day to celebrate the incredible hard work of MPs' staff. Too often it is forgotten that the majority of an MP’s allowance is spent on paying a number of staff."

It won't stop the "MPs spend record amounts of cash on hard drugs" headlines, though. Westmonster's betting that Simon Jenkins will get in there first.