It doesn’t matter if they are Conservatives, Labour, Lib-Dems – whatever. The fact is that the sheer greed of the political caste at Westminster is truly monstrous. Playing within the rules that they set, and that they policed, the enthusiasm with which they have ripped US off knows few limits. But how do you think the BBC is covering the issue? With The Telegraph providing us with details of how Conservative MP’s have had their snouts in the trough of taxpayer funded largesse, do you detect a difference in BBC reporting?
When this news broke last week and it was Labour’s dirty little expense secrets that were revealed, the BBC narrative was all about how this damaged our confidence in politicians. Instantly the issue became outward looking and was presented in terms of lost public respect for politicians. But now it is Conservative expenses the spotlight is all about the Conservatives – firmly fixed inwards. The other aspect is there is a tone difference in how this is reported. Don’t you think there was a sense of dismay when the Labour skeletons fell out of the expenses closet, whereas this last few days there is an evident delight at being able to expose the folly of the Conservatives – with a dash of class war envy thrown in.
Blears is a sexy little minx in those leathers, isn’t she?
Just noticed a small fracas over at Ch4 where market rate talents are requiring public subsidy as the money model doesn’t add up. Interesting.
But I do rather think that pointing wherever else possible in comparison in a ‘two wrongs make a god given right’ isn’t working too well at the moment in the public domain.
I see the excellent HotAir site in the US has picked up on the £92K BBC presenter getting her ear chewed off by Lord Fouldkes :
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/05/12/british-pol-destroys-bbc-hack-how-much-are-you-paid/comment-page-1/#comments
Cassandra:
You mentioned ignorance of the law being no excuse.
Certainly isn’t, especially when you are a solicitor by profession -and so is your husband!
Yes, that’s the Blears family, believe it or not.
and here again is the link to £92K Carrie Grace and Lord Foulkes that Libertarian posted at the start of this thread :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8045371.stm
One of my daughters is a cardiology consultant at a London teaching hospital, umpteen years of senior clinical experience plus some life-saving research – and earning much less than this Carrie Grace bimbo that many of us have never even heard of.
I dare not tell my daughter about this, she is already spitting blood about the 50% tax rate which amounts to nearly two-thirds of her dsalary after national insurance is taken into account !
Cassandra:
You mentioned ignorance of the law being no excuse.
Certainly isn’t, especially when you are a solicitor by profession -and so is your husband!
Yes, that’s the Blears family, believe it or not.
and here again is the link to £92K Carrie Grace and Lord Foulkes that Libertarian posted at the start of this thread :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8045371.stm
One of my daughters is a cardiology consultant at a London teaching hospital, umpteen years of senior clinical experience plus some life-saving research – and earning much less than this Carrie Grace bimbo that many of us have never even heard of.
I dare not tell my daughter about this, she is already spitting blood about the 50% tax rate which amounts to nearly two-thirds of her dsalary after national insurance is taken into account !
Sorry, but how can your daughter simtaneously earn less than Carrie Gracie AND be spitting blood about the 50% tax rate?
If she earns less than Gracie she’s totally unaffected.
Evan Davis and Nick Robinson managed to turn this “expenses row” into a story about how the reforms being put forward are totally unfair because David Cameron is so rich that he can afford the down payment on a much larger house than most MPs, and thus get a bigger free mortgage payment from the taxpayer. Robinson, of course, starts to do the reductio ad absurdum trick to show how when one gets down to it, it’s too much of a gray area about what’s a valid expense and what isn’t.
Robinson gives the impression that he’s way too close to the politicians, clearly sympathizing with what they’re going through over something not very important. They’re both left with the question of the retrospective repayments. Why, for example, does Michael Gove have to pay back thousands of pounds for one thing, but not £500 for a hotel bill? How do they decide which bills are to be payed back?
“Column inches in the Telegraph, might be the criteria,” says Davis.
They really are out of touch. It’s not the money, but the principle. It’s as lost on them as it is on the politicians.
Millie Tant,
Oooh yes, the plot thickens doesnt it, does this mean that the oily little s**t had a very good reason for leaving the top line of the crumpled up cheque blank?
I really hope her little stunt is picked apart and she is made to look like a grasping and conniving liar, which IMHO she is!
Sky News has shown an audience member at the Police Federation Conference asking a hugely embarrassing question to Jacqui Smith, wondering how she justifies the expenses she and her kind have claimed whilst police officers have had their expenses taken away. It was a Dan Hannan moment. The camera showed her looking uncomfortable, and the audience went wild with cheers and applause. As with Dan Hannan, the BBC News Channel (in their output between 2.00-4.00) has studiously ignored this, & has also neglected to report the criticisms of government policy (“oaky coaky”) voiced by the Federation’s leader (which Sky reported separately).
The BBC reported only on la Smith’s calls for an end to “police bashing” (and non-committal comments about the IPCC chairman), & on statistics about conviction rates from terrorism arrests.
Spot the difference.
Anon
Clever clogs – my cardiologist daughter is married, and as a professional couple they are being hammered by New Labour. Their marginal rate of tax and NI is ridiculous. In simple terms, by deterring my daughter putting in extra hours, lives are lost.
Plus my daughter sees at first hand how much of the taxation is wasted.
At least the BBC is being loyal this afternoon to one of its former employees, namely its omnipresent chief foreign affairs correspondent during the Iraq War, Ming Campbell.
Though attentive viewers of its News Channel might see Sir Ming's name pop up at the bottom of the screen from time to time (when "breaking news" isn't flashing up), all the presented sections on the subject of MPs expenses neglect to mention his £10,000 refurbishment embarrassment. The other Lib Dem piggies, Huhne & co, get a mention, but not Sir Ming.
Very decent of the Beeb that.
If ever their current chief economics correspondent, Vincent Cable, gets caught up in such a scape, I hope they will be just as loyal to him. I expect they will.
I noticed on last night’s Newsnight our national treasure Benn give Paxman pause for thought. Benn, whatever you think of his views , is a stern defender of Parliament and the rights of voters who pay the bills. He seemed to upset Paxman by saying that he too was paid by the public. I thought Paxman did not like that at all.
In reality the BBC chiefs and presenters seem to have convinced themselves that they are somehow not rewarded out of taxation.MPs are so are legitimate targets. Beeboids are not because they are somehow above public scrutiny and accountability.
Paxman’s instinctive eyebrow raising was very informative
dzve was dave s.
I think it has been pointed out before that the BBC licence fee is now the second most-hated tax in the UK – up from third place last year :
http://www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?method=news.detail&id=78372
A lot of the unpopularity is because the public is dimly aware that BBC folk are grossly overpaid.
The Local Government Journal reports that the Council Tax is the most unpopular UK Tax.
So does the BBC report that its licence fee is second most-hated ?
Does it hell !
Why doesn’t the BBC EVER point out that no Minister has the balls ot be present when dead soldiers return from Afghanistan? The people have the ability to show respect, but the c**ts who send them there hasn’t.
I see the BBC was spouting yet more climate change bollocks on the news. So the North pole is melting again. Just ho wmany times do they repeat this crap? So they show us a picture of some fat bird falling through the ice.
Why didn’t they show us a clip of Jeremy Clarkson thrashing 4 tons of Toyota pickup across the North pole instead for balance?
http://www.virginmedia.com/images/arctichilux.jpg
Martin,
"So the North pole is melting again. Just how many times do they repeat this crap?"
Probably as many times as they've repeated – since the mid 1980s, at fairly regular (though now less frequent) intervals – that the Amazon rain-forest is disappearing "at an alarming rate" – "an area the size of Belgium each year". It was rubbish twenty years ago & it's unlikely to be any more true now.
So I'd place a bet that the same
predictions are still going to be made for years to come, & that the Arctic ice will stay pretty much where it is & that some Beeboid will still be breathing hot air across it (at no small cost to the tax-payer, I'd guess).
Polar-bears are fascinating animals, but when one appears at the start of a David Shukman report you know your heckles are soon going to be rising!
2:52 PM
cassandra said…
Millie Tant,
Oooh yes, the plot thickens doesnt it, does this mean that the oily little s**t had a very good reason for leaving the top line of the crumpled up cheque blank?
I really hope her little stunt is picked apart and she is made to look like a grasping and conniving liar, which IMHO she is!
3:30 PM
===================================
Do I take it then that if Hazel were to sign her cheque “Yours sincerely”, you wouldn’t believe a word of it?
I reckon that Hazel loves money and that is why she always appears with that smug grin from ear to ear – it’s the thought of all that property and lovely loot that she and her husband have amassed.
That said, I don’t think she is the worst of the gravy trainers and pig troughers.
Sorry JohnA, but its “clever clogs” back again.
You specifically said that your daughter was paid less than Gracie and then specifically referred to your daughter’s salary being hit at the 50% rate.
Which turns out to be nonsense.
Its still nonsense even if she’s married. Both halves of the couple get their allowance. Both start paying different rates of tax at the same point. Your daughter is unaffected.
Given that the 50% rate will kick in at 150k (yes, I know there’s an allowance change which hurts those on over £100k) exactly HOW is your daughter being deterred from doing extra hours? Surely she would have to nearly double her hours for any of it to be taxed at 50%?
And it is, remember, ONLY the income OVER 150k that’s taxed at 50%.
By all means attack the Beeb. By all means suggest Carrie Gracie is overpaid.
Don’t just make stuff up, though – it hurts the argument.
Clever clogs
My daughter told me last week she is cutting down from 5 days a week to 4 days. She said it was because she was tired of overworking and being taxed to bits. I assumed this was because of the 50% tax rate affecting her and her husband. Yes, you are correct to point out that it hits incomes over 150K. So in this case it only hits her husband – who is in a high-risk job. But the family income is hit, and my daughter is hit at over 50% counting Nat Insurance. She also has to pay tax out of her taxed income for childcare.
The sums pointed to cutting down sharply on the childcare including its taxation and Nat Insurance costs- as well as cutting down on other matters. My daughter has never taken private work up to now. The new deal is that the child care payments are cut severely, my daughter will work 20% less for the NHS and make up partly with private work – done during her 4 days on so presumably reducing even further the work done directly for the NHS. Net, she will work far less hours. Up to now she had put in far more hours than her NHS contract strictly requires – for no extra pay.
And she is quite clear that it is the damned tax/NI system that has induced her to take this step. Plus, she says, the fact that she sees waste all the time in the NHS, and resents paying towards it by overwork.
So yes, I was wrong about the 50% tax rate. The 50% my daughter meant was her combined tax/Nat Insurance rate, now increased. But it was the budget that has induced her decision – a tax and burn budget.
Clever clogs
My daughter told me last week she is cutting down from 5 days a week to 4 days. She said it was because she was tired of overworking and being taxed to bits. I assumed this was because of the 50% tax rate affecting her and her husband. Yes, you are correct to point out that it hits incomes over 150K. So in this case it only hits her husband – who is in a high-risk job. But the family income is hit, and my daughter is hit at over 50% counting Nat Insurance. She also has to pay tax out of her taxed income for childcare.
The sums pointed to cutting down sharply on the childcare including its taxation and Nat Insurance costs- as well as cutting down on other matters. My daughter has never taken private work up to now. The new deal is that the child care payments are cut severely, my daughter will work 20% less for the NHS and make up partly with private work – done during her 4 days on so presumably reducing even further the work done directly for the NHS. Net, she will work far less hours. Up to now she had put in far more hours than her NHS contract strictly requires – for no extra pay.
And she is quite clear that it is the damned tax/NI system that has induced her to take this step. Plus, she says, the fact that she sees waste all the time in the NHS, and resents paying towards it by overwork.
So yes, I was wrong about the 50% tax rate. The 50% my daughter meant was her combined tax/Nat Insurance rate, now increased. But it was the budget that has induced her decision – a tax and burn budget.
JohnA said…
The Local Government Journal reports that the Council Tax is the most unpopular UK Tax. So does the BBC report that its licence fee is second most-hated ? Does it hell !Odd, usually public service entities are not so shy at trumpeting any rise in the rankings.
Must be another unique aspect of the way they operate.