MPs expenses – they still don’t get it

After all the publicity and fuss I suspect that many members of Parliament still do not fully understand the depth and intensity of public anger about their expenses. This is not an issue where the public wants to move on or has the slightest intention of moving on. The latest round of disclosures leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of many. Mr Brown seems to have spent £12,000 more than the new official thinks reasonable, mostly on cleaning his second home.

Huddersfield in Kirklees – the greenest place in England

If you travel along the motorway that connects two of England’s great cities, Manchester and Leeds, and look to the South you will be looking at the area administered by Kirklees Council. It includes part of the Peak District National Park, the towns of Huddersfield and Batley and straddles the old counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire.  What distinguishes Kirklees from most other English counties (and I am specifically excluding Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) is that Kirklees is probably the council that is doing the most of any council to fight global warming.

The UK needs immediate constitutional reform

There is a great deal of talk in the United Kingdom about a new constitution; we have been shaken out of our lethargy and belief that our unwritten constitution provides us with the best possible system of government by a terrible scandal in which it has been revealed that the majority of our elected representatives and some of the appointed representatives have been taking from the public purse for their own enrichment.

MPs were not acting within the rules on their expense claims

Like most of the rest of the nation, I am fed up with listening to Members of Parliament defend their expenses claims on the grounds that they acted within the rules. It is not true. They did not act within the rules. Their defence fails, yet it is trotted out time and time again without much challenge, possibly on the basis that if they repeat it often enough the people will start believing it.

The scandal of expenses and the scandal of climate change

The scandal of the “expenses” of members of Parliament just drags on. It is noteworthy to see just how greedy and inappropriate some of the so called honourable members have been. It is interesting to see MPs who have appeared on our television screens espousing their principles to us fall back on arguments of that their behaviour which is clearly wrong was perfectly legal and they were only following the rules. It is not a defence that the British Public will accept. No one held a gun to their heads as they signed for expenses.

One good reason to mortgage the future

Today in the United Kingdom is the start of the new tax year. The United Kingdom’s tax year starts on the 6^th April each year and ends on 5^th April. Most people, unlike the taxman, reckon in calendar years. In the present calendar year, according to the Adam Smith Institute, people in the United Kingdom will have to devote on average 40% of their earnings in order to pay tax of one kind or another.

Suddenly, renewable energy is important, say the Government

There have been many new “green energy” policies announced recently; we have heard about £100 billion that will be spent on green energy in the next ten years, the forests of wind farms that will be built in the United Kingdom and solar thermal systems for seven million UK homes by 2020.

Suddenly we are faced with so many Government proposals to build up a UK wide renewable energy network that we do not know where to start. I can barely believe it to be true because this is some of what I have been urging for ten years.