Tag Archives: taxpayer

Politicians Get £400 Per Month Food Allowance While Families Go Hungry

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It has not been a good time for the general public recently. In the past few years we have learned that some of our politicians are corrupt (the expenses scandal), that some of the Metropolitan Police Force was on the pay role of News Corporation, and that some of the press dealt in illegal activities to get their stories. Is anyone on the straight and narrow these days?

While ordinary people feel the pinch along with everyone else MP’s are legally claiming £400 per month on food. In fact, politics is the only career that I can think of where your get a food allowance and also get your rent or mortgage paid. All by the taxpayer, who can barely afford to live.

Recently I watched a brilliant documentary that was on the BBC called Britain’s Hidden Hungry. This was along the same lines of an excellent Marie Claire magazine article that I recently read. The documentary focused on food banks in Coventry. Food banks are on the rise now as families tighten their belts. Their are 11 food bank in Coventry. They are called Hope Centres and are set up by a Christian charity. A voucher is given to you by social services if you are deemed in need. Each voucher gives you 3 days of food.

Two more food banks are opening every week. The food bank in Coventry fed 10,000 people in 8 months. These food banks are on the rise all over the UK. Sometimes people need them as they have fallen down a benefits hole. One young women in the documentary who was in full time education only ate one meal a day because she was not eligible for benefits. She was even told to have a child by an employee at the benefits agency so she could apply for benefits.

I know quite a few politicians and they are not all corrupt and horrible. Some of them go into politics to help people and do good. But you have to wonder why in the current economical climate they are making cuts to benefits and the price of everything is rising above inflation that MP’s still get their food and rent paid for them. Especially as their constituents will be surviving on the bare minimum. If they really want to make more cuts, maybe that would be a good place to start?

Some MP’s do not even seem grateful at being in the only profession I can think of that pays for your food and rent and are still taking advantage of the situation.

David Amess is one of 27 MPs who claim expenses up to £20,000 a year to rent a second home in London while letting out the property and pocketing the cash. But he is doing nothing wrong according to parliamentary rules, just moral ones then.

Amess’s constituency home is in Essex, a mere 41 miles from Westminster. One wonders why MPs cannot commute like the rest of us. Amess owns a home in South West London, rents another at the expense of the taxpayer AND was claiming expenses to stay in a hotel in London.

The MP hit taxpayers with 23 separate expenses claims for ­hotels since July 2011.

Is one of the reasons so many MP’s are happily pushing through more austerity measures, because the austerity never affects them? Maybe a dose of reality is in order.

Riots Will cost Taxpayer £100 Million, Mark Duggan 'Did Not Fire at Police'.

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Mark Duggan ‘did not fire at police’

It has emerged that Mark Duggan had a blank-firing gun which had been converted to hold live ammunition

16,000 police on duty in London

England game against Netherlands at Wembley tomorrow called off

Jamie Olivier’s restaurant in Birmingham was targeted by rioters

Police Cells are now full and 44 more police officers have been injured

Three people arrested for attempted murder of police officer

Cost of cleaning up the riots could cost taxpayers £100 million

Prime Minister David Cameron has recalled Parliament for Thursday so he can make a statement

Sloane Square Tube station was among dozens that were closed last night during the rioting

Youths congregating at Piccadilly, riot police are there

People urged to stay indoors

In Clapham youths went on the rampage trashing dozens of shops and walking out stolen goods.
Residents complained that police were very slow to respond as a Debenhams store was ransacked.

This morning Clapham high street was cordoned off as a investigation and the clear-up got underway.

Rioting began in Hackney at about 4pm yesterday when hooded youths began hurling missiles at officers and setting fire to bins and cars. Masked rioters on BMX bicycles armed with batons attacked a crowded London bus during the evening rush-hour, chasing terrified commuters as they tried to escape.

Some of the thugs were as young as eight and they forced the driver to stop the double-decker by pelting it with champagne bottles stolen from a nearby Tesco. About 40 passengers ran away, some carrying their children.

Within hours similar scenes erupted in Lewisham, spreading to Peckham, Deptford and Croydon.
Hundreds of fires were started all over the capital, North London; Camden, Woolwich in the south, in West London; Ealing. People were forced to take the law into their own hands to protect themselves and their family.

In Dalston and Hackney, shopkeepers fought back against looting youths and protected their businesses. Surrounding areas were pillaged as members of the town’s large Turkish community stood up outside their homes and businesses to protect them.

Home Secretary Theresa May said this morning that there had been 450 arrests in the last two nights but she ruled out bringing in the Army and using water cannon. She told BBC Breakfast:

‘British policing has always meant and always depended on the support of local communities and that’s what we need now.’

She told Sky News the capital needed ‘robust policing’ – and claimed that police budget cutting had not had an impact on the violence.

‘Don’t let police budgets be used as an excuse for what is going on on our streets is sheer criminality and nothing else.’

Patrick Mercer, the Tory MP and former Army officer, hit out and told the Telegraph that tougher policing should be used.

He said: ‘I find it strange that we are willing to use these sort of measures against the Irish yet when Englishmen step out of line and behave in this atrocious and appalling way, we are happy to mollycoddle them.’

Met Police Assistant Commissioner Stephen Kavanagh seemed to contradict the Home Secretary and said using the military had not been ruled out.

‘All options were discussed last night and that means, not that we’re doing it, the people of London need to know that the Commissioner and his management board team are considering everything and working through those options as we go forward,’ he told BBC Breakfast.

Mr Kavanagh said it was ‘a shocking and appalling morning for London to wake up to’ and he was struck by the ‘sheer scale and speed with which the attacks took place across London last night’. It ‘was truly unprecedented’

He said there was a ‘changing nature’ in the make-up of the rioters, with the profile changing ‘dramatically’ last night from 14 to 17-year-olds to ‘older groups in cars doing organised looting’.

He added: ‘And there was the far more focused attempt at injuring London Ambulance staff, there to help the community, trying to injure Fire Brigade officers and, of course, police officers.’

In Birmingham, West Midlands Police said it had made about 100 arrests and confirmed that a police station in Handsworth, Birmingham, was on fire. Merseyside Police said there were a number of incidents in South Liverpool and that cars had been set on alight.

Somerset Police reported 150 rioters were in Bristol city centre, with main roads closed and a number of shops damaged.

Councilors have said it will cost £227,000 to repair Tottenham

There is a brilliant article here on how the poverty these kids have is moral, not financial.http://www.thecommentator.com/article/359/london_rioters_are_the_pampered_children_of_the_welfare_state

And the Telegraph has a brilliant article with pictures of london before and after the riot

You can help people made homeless by the London riots by donating bedding, clothes, etc to Apex House, 820 Seven Sisters Road, London N15 5PQ

Have you paid for the Royal Wedding?

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It’s the Royal Wedding soon – 29 April 2011. Have you bought your tea towel? Have you paid £3 for a bottle of Kiss me Kate from your local Weatherspoons pub?

If you haven’t yet then you need to be quick, the economy needs you! If conservative estimates are correct, £1bn could be injected into the economy as a consequence of this wedding, but it needs you, the consumer, to get out over the bank holiday weekend and spend like your children’s centre or maternity unit depended on it.

Of course that doesn’t matter much because the wedding will cost £5bn to the economy anyway, making the whole occasion a loss to the tune of £4bn – hey but it’s worth it, right? It’ll be the most expensive day that the nation has taken off for a long time but who hasn’t taken a sneaky day off before at the expense of a day’s wages (and a taxation loss of a few hundred frontline police staff)?

I suppose it would be a bit rich to ask either of the families to pay up. The Middleton’s, despite much fuss being made of Kate’s maternal family lineage, which includes coal miners from Byker (as in Byker Grove, I cannae believe that man), are worth £30m. True, that wouldn’t be able to re-pay the loss to the UK economy for an extra bank holiday, but it could’ve at least contributed to the cheesey pineapple sticks and cocktail sausages.

And the other family, the Royal Family, the most Royal of all UK families. They have a bit of cash lying around to see that Kate and Bill’s special day is, er, special, don’t they? Prince Charles, through entrepreneurial ventures, is worth something close to £36m himself. And if that’s the case, why does it matter that in 2009 the Royal Family cost the taxpayer 7p more than in 2010. It’s not a saving, it’s an insult.

The Civil List, which effectively is the Government subsidy for the family (around £38m a year), pays for Royal staff and transport. The Crown Estate says that 70% of that sum goes on staffing costs. But how much do they cost, if you consider that it cost the taxpayer £14,756 for the Prince of Wales to take the Royal Train from London to Cumbria to launch a Red Squirrel Survival Trust. Or consider that it cost £85,700 in charter flights to get him and the Duchess of Cornwall to Italy and Germany in 2009.

Those are some significant staff costs.

But – a big but – they are worth every penny for the money they bring to the economy. The Crown Estate estimates £304m. It doesn’t say exactly how, and I’d love to see some breakdown figures. I’ll give it a guess though: tourism and trade. Though France doesn’t have a Monarchy, and they’re doing okay aren’t they?

Not just okay. France is the second largest economy in Europe, fifth largest in the world and has been growing consistently since 2009. Wow. France attracted 78.95 million foreign tourists in 2010, making it the most popular tourist destination in the world. Their tower – the Eiffel tower – is the most visited paid monument in the world.

So France can do international trade well, and receive tourists without making losses literally all over the place. I’m not liking the sound of this, but perhaps there is no point having a Monarchy. But how do we tell them that?