Do you trust the government now?

First I could not belive that the government is trying to hold the Iraq inquiry in secret/private. After all public anger about MPs behaviour and how all politicians are saying "we will be open/listening/transparent from now on!"
As if that was not enough they then officially publish the expenses with loads of blanked out details. I was holding onto the hope that MPs would start to see how terrible their behavoiour seems to 'us' out here. Clearly they have not learned anything from the past months - what an utter disgrace!

The Lib Dems have been more active than most in attempting to push the open government agenda - but would they behave any better if they got in power - somehow I doubt it.

 

Frankly, I am more than disgusted with the way this government have behaved in recent years. I had no problem with the actions taken over Iraq-reason being I know less than they did-or their advisors, so I let that be.


What did it for me was when they bailed the banks out yet did nothing for small businesses other than shrug their shoulders and say "there is a recession on-tighten your belts" ( this hit me hard because my husband and I run our own business, and we have had to lay off a huge chunk of people because of the recession-try telling someone to their face that you are taking away their weekly wage), and then the expenses scandal blew up.


I have been betrayed by the Labour Government. Betrayed because they have always been seen as the working man's party, and they are not.




I was listening to the radio yesterday, and heard a woman from Salford saying exactly what I felt. It was about Hazel Blears-"she's no Salford girl."


Says it all for me.

 

I don't believe that the government doesn't have any control over the staff in the Fees office, I'm sure staff that don't comply would be moved sideways or downwards at the earliest opportunity!

There are ways around letting people know some information, like leave the town/district/first part of the postcode exposed, as you can get an idea of where the home is, but not the exact address. You can also leave the surname of employees exposed, and names of suppliers, but you can blank out the addresses/account numbers etc, but it would tell us all how much the MP's had been fiddling the system.

It is a shame that in years gone by the MP's didn't have the guts to increase their wages. I think that there should be some way of paying for the MP's who need a second home, but they should not profit from it. I read somewhere that once the olympics is over, then the MP's should live in the olympic village. It would have the security they require, and also transport links to the centre of London. Shame that the dome is now occupied, I'm sure 600 or so luxuary flats within the dome would have given the MP's a reminder of how not to do things!

 

I have utter contempt for them. I honestly believe they are all criminals and should go to jail. They have stolen millions from us, and shown no remorse now they've been caught.

Worse than that, as soon as New Labour (anyone noticed how they've ditched the 'New' lately to try to fool people into believing they are actually the labour party of old?) got into power, they gave our country away without any public consultation. 75% of our laws are now made in Europe and we can't do anything without approval from Brussels. Both my grandads gave up a significant chunk of their youth, and saw many of their mates killed in trying to keep hold of Britain's independence, and then some slimey weasel who claimed to be an ordinary working class lad from a working class northern town but was actually a solicitor from one of the most affluent towns in the north came along and gave it all away.

Fast forward a bit, to the invasion of Iraq. Remember being told that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that he could launch at us within just 45 minutes? How could we be expected to believe that? We'd fought Iraq just a few years before and they never even had a decent airforce (we were told then he must be hiding his airforce for later use against us). That was the conservative government that lied, conservatives being the slightly more left wing face of New Labour. Can anyone remember that doctor bloke that spoke up about the 45 minutes thing being unfounded, that doctor bloke that was found dead a few days later? When no weapons of mass destruction were found, that reason suddenly vanished from the media completely, and the new reason was that it was a war of liberation from an evil dictator, an evil dictator that had been in power for decades, so why was it suddenly urgent?

Fast forward again to a year or so ago. Details of every child benefit claimant went missing while under our government's control. Numerous sets of confidential, government held data have also been lost since. Yet the same government was us to all have mandatory ID cards that we would have to pay for, and they want DNA samples for everybody to be held on a big database. How can they possibly be trusted to look after such confidential data, a resource that could be used to ruin lives if in the wrong hands (identity theft etc) in light of their past record?

Then we have present day. We've learned that MPs are stealing millions from the taxpayer, but do they care? No. People all over the country are facing redundancy and repossessions, and those same people, who have paid their taxes, have to listen to the news telling them that someone has been claiming for a mortgage that was paid off ages ago, someone else is claiming for rent for a flat that he already owns, someone has bought himself a massive tv out of money he stole from the taxpayer.

To rub salt into the wounds, there was an advert on TV the other night, AFTER the MPs expenses thing came to light, telling us how they were clamping down on benefits thieves, who could face jail. I don't condone any sort of theft, but isn't it a bit iffy when ordinary joe who robs £40 per week from the benefits people goes to jail, while the same people that made these rules are robbing thousands per month and the worse they can expect as a result is to have to resign in shame.

So the short answer, if you haven't guessed, is NO, I don't trust the government.

 

I'd be interested to see records of MP's expenses going back say...30 years.

 

2 words.

Police State.

No, I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them.

 

I followed that enquiry (The Hutton Enquiry on the death of Dr David Kelly) on a dialy basis. I could not (and still do not) believe the coincidence(s). The final conclusions were (a) suicide and (b) it was all the fault of the BBC. Neither of which I believe.

The enquiry web site is still up and it's worth a read if you've got the time. (There's loads of 'blacked out' stuff in the published 'evidence'.)

If we'd known then what a bunch of *censored* those in power are, I'm sure that the Public wouldn't have let it rest there.

I'm glad to hear the news that Hoon has resigned from the Cabinet today, he was the Minister of Defence when all this lot started. There's lots of skeletons to come out of various cupboards regarding Iraq. I hope I'm still around when they're exposed.

 

NO - (that's shouting for me,lol). Bunch of hypocritical, cheating, lying sleazebags. Leaves me distraught as to what is an option for us.

cheers

 

And now they`ve been given a £10,000.00 pay rise. As for the so called expense records, to my mind, the more that`s blacked out, the bigger the fiddle. Time w e got shot of them. Just a thought, but, as we are their employers, why do we have to wait for an election before we " sack " them?

 

Good question daitheplant.

cheers

 

I ve lacked faith in labor dating back:

The farcical millennium dome, a obvious bottomless cash pit they took over from the conservatives and continued to waste money with.

Then the Iraq war.

The David Kelly cover up

The selling of the gold reserves when prices were at an all time low

The money wasted bailing out rover only for it to go bust soon after

The ban on hunting

The lack of a promised vote on the EU constitution.

The rendition of British citizens to Egypt for torture,

The continued support of the US in Iraq

The government support of Ian Blair despite obvious lies and incompetence

Fuel tax levels

MP expenses

2012 olypics...... soon to be the new dome or a potentially farr greater waste of public money!!!!

 

One little ray of light. Scotland Yard are now going to investigate a small number of fraudulent expense claims.

Pro, you forgot to mention-

42 days internment
that incompetent witch Jacqui Smith
putting Britain into debt on a massive scale (and after we finally finished paying the US back from WW11)

That's all I can think of at the moment.

 

Ah yes, the hunting ban. That ones a cracker. There is no logic to it at all. You could argue that the fox has as much right to live as anything else, but that argument doesn't work with the hunting ban because they didn't actually ban fox hunting, they just said that you can't use dogs anymore in the hunt. So then you could argue that banning the use of dogs in the hunt was right because dogs are very brutal when they catch their prey, but that argument doesn't work either because they haven't banned the use of dogs in hunting. You can still use dogs to help you catch wild rabbits for example. So they've banned the use of dogs in the fox hunt. You could argue that the reason it is ok to use dogs in the hunting of wild rabbits is because they are a real pest in agriculture, but a farmer who loses lambs and other vulnerable livestock could argue that the same is true of the fox. I know it is a controversial subject so I'm going to avoid giving my opinion on the the matter, but my point is there is no logic in what they did. It must literally have been an idea that popped into someones head one day and someone said 'that should win some votes in the city areas, and most people live in the cities nowadays so we don't need to worry about votes from the countryside anymore'.

 

The money wasted bailing out rover only for it to go bust soon after

It didn`t quite go bust Paul, they sold it to the Chineses for a £1. Only after the Chinese stripped everything from it did it go bust.:dh:

 

The 42 day internment is a cracker.

Another I forgot is the half backed reform of the house of lords .


The only good thing I can think theyve done (from a welsh viewpoint) is devolution.