The current media frenzy around MPs's expenses is similar to the indignation about bankers's bonuses. Yes, these are important issues, but are they worthy of so much press attention ?
There are other important matters at home and abroad just now : loss of more jobs in Britain and the lives of more British soldiers, for instance. I thought Nigel Lawson's suggestion that it was time for the British army to start withdrawing from Afghanistan, because this is a foreign conflict Britain can no longer afford, an interesting one : certainly of more interest to me than the banalities of MPs's expense claims.
As to the "cost" of MPs, my own experience is that some are good value for money and others aren't. Some are good at dealing with constituency matters, others with wider issues. I would cite Joan Ruddock, my MP when I lived in London, and now a government minister at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as someone who is good at both. On the other hand, I don't rate highly my local Worcestershire MPs, Labour or Conservative.
With regard to Messers* Foster and Luff MP, details of their expenses are posted on the windows of the empty Woolworth store in the centre of Worcester : now there's a real story.
* There is an old country saying : "To hold parry with the hare (or fox), and to hunt with the hounds" ie to be something of a double-dealer. On environmental issues, I would suggest that this saying applies equally to these gentlemen; notwithstanding that "Foxy Foster" was instrumental in the hunting ban : another political and media distraction, from the preamble to the Iraqi war, for instance. Let's hope the next government brings fewer fatal distractions.
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