MP's diary entries and expenses

I am currently reading the third of the Alan Clark Diaries (Called The Last Diaries) and found an interesting entry early on. It is on p8 of the 2003 paperback edition. It is revealing of Alan Clark's attitudes.

MoD, Thursday, 28 February [1991]

There is now talk of a General Election in June. Just time to claim, massively, some allowances out of 91-92!

[I have removed the rest of the entry, but it doesn't change the meaning.]

I doubt anyone would be surprised by that! Clark's diaries are amazing reading and easily obtained second hand.

Another interesting quote is in Chris Mullin's diary. I think this one shows how easy it is for people to end up becoming part of an institution.

Wednesday, 1 May [2002]

Andrew Mackinlay dropped a little bombshell at this afternoon's meeting of the parliamentary committee. Apparently, under the Freedom of Information Act, by January 2005 MP's expenses will be subject to public scrutiny, retrospectively. Goodness knows what mischief that will cause. 'We are in a jam,' said Robin Cook. 'Few members have yet tumbled to the juggernaut heading their way.' He said he had been advised that we could probably get away with publishing headline figures and it would be desirable to start publishing a year before the deadline so that any fuss would have died down come the general election. It was agreed not to minute the discussion.

[My emphasis and I have removed a second unrelated paragraph from the entry. p284-5 of the hardback first edition. The Parliamntary Committee mentioned is a Labour Party committee to allow backbenchers and the government to stay in touch (see the preface and p226).]

I have a lot of respect for Mullin but this isn't good. I will be careful to note that he doesn't record his view on this, merely reports the committee results, but it is fair to note that he didn't kick off a stink about the decision. It is clear he knew that the claims had issues ("mischief" would result, a "juggernaut", the expectation of "fuss") and agreed to conceal both this (headline only) and the discussion (minutes).

I think what this shows is how easy it is to become loyal to institutions and organisations when you belong to them however honourable and independent you may be.

I am surprised this passage hasn't been picked up on more.

STV considered... normal? (somewhere!)

There is a nice article on STV by an Irish political activist over at Libdem Voice.

Whilst no voting system is perfect, indeed it is impossible to invent one which is (see below), STV has many nice features and the article us written by someone with experience of the system.

That's one key feature of STV conservatives (small c, many are in the Labour party too) miss: it is being used successfully in other places. Heck it is being used in the UK: in Scottish Councils and in NI's Euro elections. It isn't a dangerous experiment.

Currently we have a system that gives a landslide to a party polling under 40% of the votes cast. ConLab get 86% of the seats for 67% of the vote. That means just under half the seats haven't changed hands since 1970 (40 years), and just over 1 in 4 (29%) haven't changed since 1945.

This isn't healthy: it leads to a sense of entitlement that explains the ConLab attitude to the other parties. Why don't we know our place and accept the crumbs? A sense of entitlement that creates the expenses system.

For those who want to know why you can't gave a perfect election system have a look at wikipedia's article on voting systems.

Oolon arrives

Testing... testing... 1.. 2.. 3.. 4...

So this thing is working. And it is time to start ranting and raving at the universe.

Today the MP's expenses issue returns. I am awaiting the list of the 325 MPs who have been bad with interest. I may even do some analysis on it. Yippee.

In local news it has stopped raining and is a nice sunny day.