Avaricious tossers lose expenses case...

Well, well, well. The House of Commons has lost its court case to keep the expense details of its MPs as a dirty little secret. It comes as good news for democracy but bad nose for money-grubbing politicians everywhere who will, from now on, no doubt, be a little more scrupulous about wasting their whopping £23,000 'living allowances' on taxis rides, hand-jobs, and other crap that they don't really need.

The judges in charge of the case threw the politicians out on their backbench smelling bottoms, saying that there were no legal grounds for their expense details to be shrouded in such mystery, and that Parliament had to pay the legal costs of all four parties involved in the hearing.

Parties included the politicians themselves, the Sunday Times, and somebody called Heather Brooke, an information campaigner.

Westmonster is pleased with the result of the case. It's about time that MPs were forced to get a little more serious regarding the public funds that they are entrusted with. The only real argument that lawyers for the Mps could offer was that the details should remain secret because nobody told the MPs in advance that they wouldn't be. Go work that one out..

If there was any real sense in the world, there would be an official body to investigate and perhaps change the way that MP perquisites are managed and arranged. The tenuous arguments offered by MPs in order to try and help keep spending details secret proves that something is definitely amiss with the whole system. And don't politicians get salaries, anyway? Why do they need living expenses that are more than the average annual salary of the regular citizen??

The details of the expense spendings are to be released over the next few days.

Written by Oli Anderson on 16 May 2008 1:57 PM. Permalink