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EXCLUSIVE Tomorrow's Telegraph: Let Down, Over Promising
LOL are gutted. Thinking that the Telegraph would be as good as their word (above and all over Google Ads, right) and publish the full un-redacted allowances and expenses claims of all 646 MPs. In fact they are providing just one of the potential 12 "sets" of digital paperwork they might provide. That is the 2007-8 Additional Cost Allowances' claims. Here's the splash page. It's dishonest I think. That's what it is. Bally dishonest. Telling us any old shit just to get us to vote for them. And take our money. Oh sweet irony.
The online Cabinet Papers provide a better (and less filthy lying scumbag) service.
5 comments:
Fair point. This all just feels like someone's leant over and repeatedly twatted my head against the table. I wish all those who had done the dirty would just do the decent & fuck off but use this time to train up the next lot but I guess i'm a little drunk. No one's giving a shit about strategy - all public sec employees are shitting bricks and the pension problem ain't going anywhere except worse. Anywho - you checked out the public health & involvement Act - bit of a wanky document if ever there was one but I guess it's democratic so probably shouldn't give a monkeys.
You've lost me a bit at the end there oh drunken one ...
[rhetoric]Funny thing is if the MPs had stood up and said, with a bit more vim:
"Sod off, it's in my terms and conditions, and that's the end of it. Don't you claim whatever your wages and exes and allowances scheme says you can have? Do you only ask for 25p a mile when the scheme says 40p? Or accept normal pay instead of double time for bank holidays? Or insist on camping when the firm offers you a 3-star room?"
And/or:
"Sod off you people, have heart, I've been a bit of a silly billy, but I wanted the grapefruit dishes/huge TV/embroidered cushions/knob of butter/stick of lippy and so I stuck in for it. They let me have it. End of."
(also known as "the Kaufman")
This would have left a few dozen with silly grins and running gags about duck houses, a collective feeling that they should perhaps get more pay and less trough, and the usual stuff about a barracks/MP hotel and so on.
Isolating the flippers, a bit - drawing attention to the avoidance available to all the rather well off two home classes - and really doing for the ones with no real second or first home who are BANG TO RIGHTS - plus the ones who kept claiming when paid off.
The MPs collectively have arguably really messed up on all this.[/rhetoric]
It's a bollox Act that gives rise to 4 year elected leaders or mayors and strengthens parish councils and stuff - encourages regional gov without the hassle of asking people if they want it. Also statutes petitions when 5% electorate say 'buggeroff'.
Sounds like Projectile Vomiting law-wise does that.
The Daily Telegraph can't of course produce the complete details they hold on MPs expenses claims, for some fairly obvious reasons.
(a) Reproducing them all in printed form would require the publication of several huge volumes. For those who still get their newspapers delivered, they would never go through the letter box.
(b) Hardly anyone would plough through this junk. Not even when they found their own MP's details.
(c) For legal reasons, the Daily Telegraph only lifts certain of the redacted material. On the material on its web-site giving Cabinet Ministers' "Accomodation Costs Allowances", it retains the blacked-out sections giving the Ministers' signatures, material entered by the fees office which is likely to contain credit card numbers and the like and the full details of the addresses of Ministers' second homes. However, the blacked our bits showing the town where the second home is situated is cleared as is the start of the post code. So it could say the equivalent of "London SE 1".
When the Telegraph's Web-site says "Uncensored; the Cabinet Expenses in full" that is not the case, not just for the above reasons but because for the period covered from 2004-9 certain pages are missing, including the redacted material reproduced in relation to Gordon Brown on page 4 of today's paper!
The Telegraph claims that at 8am on Tuesday June 23, 2009 all the material they hold will be published in full on its web-site. But we know that in addition to the matters I refered to above which remain redacted, they will need to take care about DATA Protection, Contract Law and Employment Legisation especially where these refers to third parties.
Whilst without the Telegraph certain things we needed to know might never have emerged. They (and much of the media)have used much of the material they acquired in a less then responsible way. I am sure at some time what they have been up to will be revealed, hopefully in an unredacted form.
What ideas do they have to move on to for an acceptable set of arrangements? Would they accept a version of the position which appears on my own blog, which includes matters I put before the Committee on Standards in Public Life way back during its first enquiry in 1995. Its a pity they did not set the ball rolling then.
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