MP Expensive Claims

Shouldn't that be 'sen', as in 'Fergessen'?

The BNP are a joke. That is as long as they don't have any real power. I remember it was once in their manifesto that people should be allowed to keep an assault rifle for self defence. How bizarre is that? Who poses such a threat that we need an AK47 to hand? Probably people with the wrong coloured skin or the wrong surname if the BNP got into power.

 

I quite agree Clueless, insofar that their manifesto is pure and unadulterated fascism, but I don't think they are anywhere near a joke-infact it is extremely worrying to me that there are some who would and do actually vote for them-often from the generation who lost so much in a war to throw over another Fascist country.

 

That's why I fear the loss in confidence in our current elected lot. It might well leave a power vacuum to be filled with even worse...and what do hoovers suck up?

I'm tempted to either spoil my vote or vote for the Greens. They have a decent track record in Germany, where they've been in government via the coalition for years.

 

The trouble is, I don't think there's a single party that isn't made up of complete idiots. Election time is a time to decide which party is the least insane and corrupt, rather than the most worthy to run the country.

Unfortunately the greens don't stand a chance. I don't say that because of their policies, but because they are trapped in an undemocratic system that means they simply can't win. Here's why: Unless they pay a fee to have a candidate in nearly every ward, they simply can't possibly win enough seats to win the election. If they don't have a candidate in your ward, you simply can't vote for them as there won't be an option on the ballot paper. This means that those voters that want to vote for a party that isn't represented in their ward are effectively deprived of their democratic right to vote. Smaller parties simply can't raise enough money to pay the fees to register a candidate in every ward. Only those with large corporate supporters can afford that, and not many corporations will fund the greens.

At election time, for the final result, it is seats that are counted and not votes. That means that it is quite possible for a party with less actual votes to beat a party that would have had more votes if not for the fact that their supporters were denied the right to vote for them.

Then there's New Labour's magic bullet. Well two magic bullets actually. Their first magic bullet can be summed up thusly "I'll be voting Labour because my dad always voted Labour or because I've always voted Labour". Their second magic bullet can be summed up thusly "Look what Maggie Thatcher did to our country". I could go on for pages about why both of these magic bullets are blanks, but the sad truth is the vast majority of British voters can't think for themselves, which is why we keep allowing **** governments to do it for us.

 

After all we have listened to on the news and reading about these claims i think its time Gordon Brown and the other party leaders should set up a team independant auditors, there would be a cost but if they go back to when this so called green book came out there must be thousands of incorrect claims made.

Therefore the money that could be recovered would be substanial and go towards the cost of payment to some outside company of auditors obioiusly all the records are kept on files or floppy disc etc i dont beleive they are destroyed it would take some time i only wish the ( Daily Telegraph ) had the information of claims made going back to that so called green book with the rules in.

( Youngdaisydee ) made a comment she was surprised they are so stupid as to think they can get away with it well they must have been getting away with it for twenty or more years so i think they are clever crooks a lot of them should be living on the Costa Del Sol with a lot of other crooks.

I also agree with some comment about Local Councils they are as bad as them we all have to remember the next elections.

 

I think these people have behaved in the most shameful manner but they don't even have any shame.
I have no respect for, or confidence in, any of them.

 

They already pay audit firms obscene amounts of taxpayers money to audit stuff. A few years ago the company I worked for had a visit from a well know audit company to oversee a government project we were working on. Our technical people (including me) were being charged out to the government for £300 per person per day, and there were about 5 of us on a project that should have lasted 4 weeks. The audit firm sent in two people, charged to the government (the taxpayer) at £1000 per person per day. These auditors understood nothing, and spent so much time asking silly questions and recommending unworkable changes that the project actually ran on for nearly a year. So without the auditors, the project would have cost the taxpayer around £30,000 (4 weeks, 5 days a week at rates mentioned). With the auditors it would have cost around £700,000 (based on 40 weeks, 5 days a week at the rates mentioned). So by getting some 'independent' auditors to ensure the taxpayer was getting value for money, they saved around minus £670,000. That's over 22 times the original estimate. This is why government projects often run past deadline and over budget.

What we need is a simpler system, as less[/] beaurocrats. Then there are less people to pay, less red tape to navigate and fewer loopholes to exploit.

 

Good idea Caj.

But I'm afraid in my case it is voter apathy, people are apathetic about elections.

Trouble is "the powers that be", seem to be having some trouble understanding why.

For me the main reason is that its a waste of time because we know who is going to win in many areas, its only the marginals where its worth bothering.

If I knew my vote would count towards forming a government I might just bother, but if you dont vote for the winner your vote is wasted.

 

I see nothing in the BNP manifesto about sending immigrants in general "back to where they come from." Illegal immigrants -yes, as opposed to someone like Boris Johnson who wants to grant an amnesty as a reward for those who have broken the laws of our country; bogus asylum seekers - yes, for how many asylum seekers can argue that their claims are genuine as asylum is meant to be claimed in the first safe country in which asylum seekers set foot; foreign crooks, rapists and murderers currently protected from deportation because it would breach their human rights - yes, certainly.

And while I won't be as offensive as another contributor to this thread who has suggested that certain others who use the forum whose views don't accord with their own need their heads examining, I would suggest that the idea that a strong vote for the BNP might herald a return to a Nazi-style holocaust is an utterly fantastic one.

It might be true that Great Britain has been built on wave after wave of immigration (my own surname is French) but it hasn't previously suffered an absolute invasion in the short space of 40 years with a great many of those who have come here refusing to integrate successfully.

As far as I can see the rise in support for the BNP has nothing to do with anybody's purity of blood but more to do with the abuses in many forms that the host population has been expected to endure without a whimper for the past few decades. The current issue of the fraudulent expenses claims has proved to be the catalyst which has given people the opportunity to express their utter contempt for the people who are presently governing the country.

But certainly, if you have any hard evidence to support your contention that the BNP is keeping quiet about certain undefined "unsavoury beliefs and aims" or has plans to deport legally-settled, law-abiding immigrants if they ever came to power, or, indeed, to re-criminalise certain sex acts in private between consenting adults I will be glad to see it, for I certainly would not give them my vote in such an event.

 

They've cleaned their website up a bit lately. Last time I looked at it (a few months ago), the had the audacity to define what a 'Brit' was. It could be anyone who is descended directly from Northern European settlers or anglo-saxons, but oddly enough not French (ruling out anyone whose ancient ancesters were Normans or Celts), or Southern or Eastern Europeans (now where did those Romans come from and did they breed with the native ladies I wonder).

The BNP evolved from a gang of fascists who called themselves the British National Front before they formed a political party. The British National Front had a fearsome reputation not entirely dissimilar to America's KKK. They have been known to organise violence on a grand scale here on our own turf. One of their tactics was to 'infiltrate' any public gathering and play one group off against the other to provoke them into violence. There website has been cleaned up a bit since last time I looked, but a few months back they publicly stated via their official site that it was not only unacceptable to call someone British if they didn't meet the BNP's specific and rather flawed criteria, but it should also be illegal to be gay, and illegal for mixed race breeding.

While I do agree that we are seeing too many people coming into our country, at the same time this argument is fundamentally flawed. Just after WW2 we had mass immigration from India and the newly formed Pakistan. They came over to help rebuild our country and then just stayed. Given that we (Britain) had just tore their country in half and created considerable trouble for them, after ruling them for about 100 years, I think they had the right. Just before, and at the beginning of WW2 we had mass immigration from Poland. Many Polish lads came to Britain to join our armed forces to help us defeat the Nazis.

I can agree with that, but support for the BNP is not the solution.

Unfortunately they've cleaned up their website lately, but I'm sure its common knowledge that the BNP is just the tenuously legalised version of the British National Front, and their exploits are well documented if you dig about. To be honest, reading the current version of their website I'd be all for voting them in, but I won't because I've read previous versions of their site and found it nothing but light hearted entertainment that anyone so insane could take themselves seriously. Now they've cleaned up their site, I find it slightly more worrying because, as I said, if their current site was the first thing I'd read about them I would vote for them, and many others might fall into the same trap.

 

I've no idea when the last time you looked at the BNP website was so will have to take it on trust that they have "cleaned up their website." Of course, it could be that the party has evolved along with their website. It might be well to reflect that the Labour Party contained (and probably still does) many members and politicians whose background was definitely communist...you know the ones that murdered the Russian Royal family and sent millions to concentration camps in the Stalin era in the USSR.... but then, the Labour party is one worthy of our respect, setting aside a few little matters like taking us into an illegal war on the basis of lies about weapons of mass destruction, denying us a promised referendum on Europe and the lining of many members pockets at the expense of the taxpayer.

Personally I cannot understand how to attempt a definition of a word or a group of people is in any way audacious; presumably the "Black Police Officers" association must have defined what they mean by the word "Black" based on racial characteristics. Do you consider that audacious too? Would you be surprised if an Arab told you that he didn't consider that a blond, fair-skinned child of Scandinavian parents couldn't be considered an Arab even though he and several previous generations of the family were born in the middle East?

I really do think that you should provide definite evidence for your contention that the BNP want to make being gay illegal or miscegenation illegal before stating such a thing. I have friends who are gay and another who has mixed race children all of whom vote BNP so I would feel it my duty to let them know about this....if you could provide the evidence.

My understanding is that the BNP does not intend to criminalise homosexual acts between consenting adults in private, thus not wishing to return to the status quo that operated under both Labour and Tory governments for the first twenty years of my lifetime.

 

I think this is just about the worst thing the MPs have done.

I have strong feelings about the BNP, but in all honesty each and every comment I try to craft can be applied to all parties. And that is disgusting.


I will be voting, and I will not be spoiling my ballot paper, because if I do, and I dislike something about it afterwards I will only have myself to blame.


http://www.stopthebnp.org.uk/

 

As far as I'm concerned you lost the argument the minute you descended to personal abuse.

 

Or maybe they've realised that their old choice of words made them look quite insane, and decided they would have more success if the went a bit more mainstream.

Given that respected historians argue over who has settled here over the millenia and when, and how long they stayed for and who they bred with while here, I think it is a bit audacious for some political group (leaving aside my feelings for that group in particular) to come up with a definitive set of criteria for what constitutes a Brit. This is not the same as your 'Black Police Officer' example, although I have to admit it is a bit of an odd definition, as I for one have never in my life seen a black person. I've seen people with dark brown skin, slightly yellow skin, beige, creamy colour, sort of red, but never actually black. I find the whole black/white thing rather bizarre because if I saw a white person that would probably freak me out a bit. Of course we can attach labels to people if it suits, and if they are happy with it, I'm not that politically correct, but I don't see how what 'Black police officer' actually has to do with anything to be honest.

It's not really my job to provide evidence, I have no real interest in the BNP, and they have provide all the evidence you seek themselves, just evidently not in the latest edition of their website.

As much as I dislike the BNP, I dislike more the idea that we can't choose for ourselves. All I'm trying to do is highlight that the BNP is not what they currently seem to be saying they are (unless they've all had a drastic change of heart in the last few months or so). If the BNP have convinced you that they are the right party to run the country, then vote for them. I won't though. That's the whole point of democracy. We can all vote for who we each think is best for the job.

Incidentally, I dislike New Labour almost as much, and probably the others too but haven't really given the other parties too much thought at this point.

 

Hi Pete. My point is that if the 34% of us that don't vote indicate that no one is representing us, the politicos might take notice. If a party could pick up 34% of the votes in an election, they would take us seriously. Your point about marginals is soooo relevant. I live in the New Forest and it is rock solid Tory. If you put up a new forest pony as a Tory candidate this lot would vote for it:D. Essentially, I'm without a vote. :(