DAILY MAIL COMMENT: When will MPs step off the gravy train?
Far too frequently, our politicians seem determined to look after their own interests to the detriment of the people they are elected to serve.
After the expenses scandal heaped shame on Westminster, MPs on all sides loftily promised to stop milking the taxpayer.
A decade on from those revelations of tawdry greed, with inflation surging and ordinary households forced to tighten their belts, have our conceited representatives been true to their word?
After the expenses scandal heaped shame on Westminster, MPs on all sides loftily promised to stop milking the taxpayer (file photo used)
Don’t be silly! For them, as ever, the Commons gravy train keeps rolling on.
Today, the Daily Mail exposes how one in seven MPs still employs wives, husbands or children on the public payroll.
With an unyielding sense of entitlement, they hand relatives up to £60,000 each to help run their offices, costing the taxpayer as much as £3million a year.
Yes, MPs need staff. Family members, they argue, understand the long hours politics demands and can be trusted to handle casework sensitively and discreetly.
But how many constituents can boost their household income by getting the taxpayer to remunerate their near and dear? And the dubious practices don’t end there.
Today, the Daily Mail exposes how one in seven MPs still employs wives, husbands or children on the public payroll. The highest-paid of the ‘connected parties’ was Christine Chope, wife of Tory Sir Christopher Chope (both pictured), who earned up to £60,000 for her secretarial work
Only in the surreally venal world of Westminster could MPs feather their nests by letting out property they own in London, then claiming large amounts of state money to rent second homes or pay for a hotel room near the Commons.
If they were obliged to live in their own accommodation, it would save us hundreds of thousands of pounds annually.
No politician has committed criminal offences, nor broken Parliamentary rules.
But just because something is within the letter of the law does not mean it is within the spirit. So much for MPs’ chastened pledges to become paragons of probity!
Our damning findings prove how contemptuously they still treat voters.
Propaganda for pupils
Time was when the unerring focus of schools was the education and intellectual development of children.
These days, instead of reading, writing and arithmetic, too many militant teachers are using the classroom to brainwash pupils in hard-Left ideology.
That one Tory-hating primary head hijacked the curriculum to encourage ten-year-olds to denounce Boris Johnson as an untrustworthy liar is deeply disturbing.
Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi issued new guidance compelling schools to root out activism
Making impressionable children parrot political messages belongs in Maoist China, not 21st century Britain.
So top marks to Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi for issuing new guidance compelling schools to root out activism.
We are the first to applaud the many superb teachers who strive to push up standards. But political views should be left at the school gates.
Classrooms, after all, are for education – not indoctrination.
Lacking on fracking
If ever there was a moment for the West to stand up forcefully for freedom it is now, as Vladimir Putin threatens Ukraine.
Tanks could begin the invasion ‘at any moment’, warns Boris Johnson.
However, instead of showing strength and common purpose, our European allies are faltering, heavily dependent as they are on Russian gas.
Intelligence suggests Vladimir Putin’s (pictured) troops are planning to cross the border ‘at any moment’, possibly as soon as Wednesday
Fortunately, the UK is not. But our reckless dash to reach net zero carbon means we remain dangerously reliant on volatile fossil fuel imports.
Yet experts say we have a wealth of shale gas under our feet, which could provide affordable energy for decades, if only the Government did not wilt under pressure from the green lobby.
The fracking ban increasingly seems rooted in superstition and dogma, not scientific fact. Wise ministers would revisit it.
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