April 29, 2009
BREAKING NEWS: Parliamentary Employees Instructed to Behave Like Adults in Efforts to Battle Pig Flu
I have just received an email from Parliamentary Notices concerning the “outbreak” of swine flu (I work in the Houses of Commons, for those who don’t know).
It offers crucial advice for stopping the spread of swine flu:
We encourage you to take the following simple precautionary measures which have been shown to be effective in reducing the transmission of all viruses – this information is also being widely available in the national press, on health agency websites and elsewhere:
- Cover your nose and mouth when coughing or sneezing, using a tissue when possible.
- Dispose of dirty tissues promptly and carefully.
- Maintain good basic hygiene, for example washing hands frequently with soap and water to reduce the spread of the virus from your hands to face or to other people.
I’m glad that I received this email!
You see, I was raised by a colony of feral urban baboons who taught me to sneeze in people’s faces, leave my used tissues in other people’s dinners, and to never, ever, wash my hands.
Thankfully these childhood lessons have been over-turned by the power of Parliamentary Notices, in their efforts to take the concept of the nanny state to a whole new level.
Arguing Back
I’ve got a piece up at Liberal Conspiracy today arguing that we should stand up to the bogey man of the Brain Drain.
I would also strongly recommend reading Richard Murphy’s take on the Brain Drain, here, which is excellent.
Oink
HAVE YOU GOT A FACE MASK?!
ARE YOU PREPARED TO FIGHT FOR A FLU JAB – THERE’S ONLY ENOUGH FOR HALF OF US YOU KNOW?!
HAVE YOU TOUCHED A MEXICAN RECENTLY, OR EVEN EATEN A FAJITA, OR FOR THAT MATTER NIBBLED A BACON SANDWICH?!
BECAUSE IF YOU HAVE, YOU’RE PROBABLY GOING TO DIE!
IT’S HERE!
SWINE FLU!
WE’RE ALL GOING TO FUCKING DIE!!
ARE YOU FUCKING SCARED YET?!!
(Please buy our newspaper)
Said the media.
So we now know - due to great feats of investigative journalism – that there are….two cases of swine flu confirmed in the UK.
Those two cases comprise a newly-wed couple who got a bit ill after going on holiday to Mexico, but as far as I’m aware aren’t dead. The couple live in Scotland.
Yet London’s Evening Standard sees fit to scream London doctors can’t get hands on flu drugs, after booming “IT’S HERE!” from it’s front page yesterday. Last time I checked, London wasn’t in Scotland. But maybe I’m missing something.
Worldwide, swine flu is being reported in New Zealand, the USA, and today Germany. It started in Mexico, where 2,000 people have been diagnosed, and 150 people have died. Except not all of those deaths are confirmed cases of swine flu. And it’s an unremarkable and banal fact that ordinary flu kills people all the time. Especially when they have poor diets, poor health care, and live in conditions of poverty. You know, like your average poor Mexican.
At the time of writing, nobody outside of Mexico has died of swine flu.
Now, perhaps there will be a pandemic. But flu pandemics take time to develop. Listen to the piece on Radio 4 this morning (scroll down to 07.49) which explains that the flu pandemics of the late 1950s and 1960s took months to develop – and that months is plenty long enough for modern scientists to develop vaccines and treatments.
As Simon Jenkins argues, the swine flu hysteria is a media creation manufactured to shift units.
Which wouldn’t be so bad, if it weren’t the case that human beings world wide are in fact faced with a true viral pandemic of apocalyptic proportions, which is claiming millions of live. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?
It’s called HIV/Aids, and the figures look like this:
| Estimate | Range | |
|---|---|---|
| People living with HIV/AIDS in 2007 | 33.0 million | 30.3-36.1 million |
| Adults living with HIV/AIDS in 2007 | 30.8 million | 28.2-34.0 million |
| Women living with HIV/AIDS in 2007 | 15.5 million | 14.2-16.9 million |
| Children living with HIV/AIDS in 2007 | 2.0 million | 1.9-2.3 million |
| People newly infected with HIV in 2007 | 2.7 million | 2.2-3.2 million |
| Children newly infected with HIV in 2007 | 0.37 million | 0.33-0.41 million |
| AIDS deaths in 2007 | 2.0 million | 1.8-2.3 million |
| Child AIDS deaths in 2007 | 0.27 million | 0.25-0.29 million |
More than 25 million people have died of AIDS since 1981.
Africa has 11.6 million AIDS orphans.
At the end of 2007, women accounted for 50% of all adults living with HIV worldwide, and for 59% in sub-Saharan Africa.
Young people (under 25 years old) account for half of all new HIV infections worldwide.
In developing and transitional countries, 9.7 million people are in immediate need of life-saving AIDS drugs; of these, only 2.99 million (31%) are receiving the drugs. (Source)
That’s a real pandemic. But reporting on the daily fact that poor black Africans, and poor Russian drug users, and poor Latin Americans told by the Pope not to use condoms, are dying in their millions doesn’t sell newspapers, does it?
No, far better to squeal hysterically like little piggies and adhere to the principle that the one thing which sells better than sex is fear.
UPDATE: As of 13.27 when I checked the BBC, there has been a confirmed death from swine flu outside of Mexic, over the border in Texas.
April 28, 2009
Opposite Day
Normally articles on the Guardian’s Comment is Free website are high in quality, with the comment threads beneath them rapidly becoming clogged with the detritus of inane idiocy.
But apparently it’s opposite day. Somebody called Tetsuya Ishikawa has written a pathetic piece warning of a “Brain Drain” which can basically be summarised as “we, the rich bankers, wish to hold the rest of you hostage”.
Yet the replies in the comment thread are almost uniformly wonderful in their outrage. They also encapsulate the popular mood of the moment.
Take note, those of wealth and privilege. The tide is turning against you.
April 27, 2009
Do Tax Havens Cause Poverty?
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Centre for the Study of Global Governance panel discussion on Thursday (April 30th), starting 6.30, at the LSE.
I’m going. You should too.
In the meantime, here’s something to get you in the mood
Obviously, something is rotten in global state affairs. There is so much more money in the world than ever before in human history. Nevertheless, the number of hungry people is increasing. All studies on the implementation of the very modest MDGs [Millenium Development Goals] state that they will not be met. However, compared to the $33 trillion of liquid capital assets of the NHWIs [High Net Worth Individuals], the financial means required to reduce extreme poverty by half amount to peanuts. A solitary tax of only 0.7 per cent on the capital assets of the HNWIs would generate $321billion. This is more than double the present official development aid. A small tax on the trade in major currencies, of the order of 0.01 per cent, would generate sums that development policies have never received. In 2009 we can celebrate the 39th anniversary of the non-compliance with the 0.7 per cent target. After such a long period of continuous failure it is time [to] raise the question: Why?
It is time to give up false modesty. The target of reducing poverty by half is too modest. Poverty must and can be eradicated totally. Therefore inequality must be tackled. There is more than enough money. It is time to turn attention on the systematic questions of the global financial system. Thing big – there is the big money out there, and it only has to be distributed better. This question has to come on top of the international agenda, because one cannot talk about poverty and be silent about wealth.
- Peter Wahl, The Global Financial System and Enduring Poverty in Tax Justice, Kohonen and Mestrum eds, Pluto Books 2009
Egomania
Step aside Sarah Palin, the American religious right has a new poster girl.
Step forward, Carrie Prejean, the anti-gay marriage, pro-”traditional values” living Barbie Doll who was not crowned Miss America.
Was Miss California denied the national crown because she told pageant judge – and nauseating moronic nincompoop – Perez Hilton that she believed that marriage was only supposed to be between a man and a woman? That, “no offence”, but that’s just the way she was raised?
Isn’t it great when people say “no offence”, meaning “I am now about to offend you and I am perfectly happy about it”? And, “it’s just the way I was brought up”, meaning “I was raised properly, unlike yourself, who was clearly raised by amoral wolves” ?
It’s worth looking at some of the specific delicacies Prejean has spouted, namely those which have further endeared her to the American Christian right, including especially this utterance to Fox News:
“By having to answer that question in front of a national audience, God was testing my character and faith. I’m glad I stayed true to myself,”
Or as quoted in The Guardian:
“By having to answer that question in front of a national audience, God was testing my character and faith,” she says. “I’m glad I stayed true to myself. It was not about being politically correct; for me, it was about being biblically correct. I am so proud of myself and I have so many people that are so proud of me. And [winning] wasn’t what God wanted for my life that night.”
It’s quite amazing, isn’t it? The woman actually thinks that the whole event has been orchastred purposefully by God, to test her.
Now that seems just a teeney-weeney little bit arrogant to me.
Humanitarian crisis in Northern Sri Lanka? Ongoing decades-long attrocity in the Congo? Human beings continuously wrecking the creation He dedicated 6 whole days to making, and in the process wiping out some of his coolest animals? Neutron reality bomb being constructed by the evil lord ZXfghe-kiu in the Epsilon 13 gammsystem?
No, God hasn’t got time to worry about these things, because he’s watching a beauty pageant in which he is testing Miss California.
And it’s no good to say “God is omniscient, he cares about all things” as a way of excusing Prejean’s arrogance. If God is omniscient and careas about everything, then the fact he cares about whether or not Miss California thinks the state should condone the temporal joining of immortal souls that are (according to the Evangelical right) going to hell anyway, is utterly unremarkable.
The only way it could be something remarkeable (and therefore worth commenting upon) is if God is paying special attention to Prejean. Which is to say, Prejean thinks the decision not to crown her Miss America has commanded the attention of God himself.
Crikey.
We Britons should thank our lucky stars. With the exception of Tony Blair and his theological outpourings (possessing the profundity of a toddler’s paddling pool), we are mercifully exempt from the inclusion of such megalomaniacal insanity in our politics.
That, at least, is something to be happy about. Even if we have a very different sort of insanity to contend with:
April 25, 2009
Brain Drain Sir? Oh, go on then!
It hasn’t taken long for the right to roll out one of its favourite scare tactics. After Alistair Darling announced increases in top-rate income tax for the 1% of Britons earning over £150,000 a year, it took less than a day for the dreaded Brain Drain to rear its ugly head.
The spectre of the Brain Drain – complete with visions of evil machines sucking the life force from the minds of hapless innocents – is intended to do two things when deployed by the right. First, to scare ordinary people: “well you could increase taxes on the rich – but then there will be a Brain Drain and all the clever, valuable people will be gone and you will suffer!” Second, it’s a threat: “Don’t put up taxes, or we’ll leave – and you need us. So get back in your box and shut up, scum.”
How should we respond to this scare-tactic-cum-threat? Well I suggest by not being scared and not feeling threatened. Why? Because there won’t actually be a brain drain, and even if there was one, it would probably be a good thing.
Why there won’t be a brain drain
The Guardian is reporting that Darling’s tax increases will see 25,000 people leave the country to avoid paying increased rates.
This is dubious. It assumes that 25,000 people – who are already very wealthy – will be happy to uproot themselves and their families, leaving friends and relatives behind, all to avoid paying an increase in tax which, given their existing wealth, is hardly going to leave them destitute. For sure, some people probably will leave – American hedge fund managers working the in City, for example, may relocate to the Cayman Islands. But to anticipate later thoughts, are we really that bothered about them? You know, those City Boys who we have to thank for the wonderful state of the global economy today.
The idea that there will be a mass exodus of the rich underestimates the extent to which many people have ties to the place they live, above and beyond naked financial advantage. And remember, it’s one thing to tell a journalist you’ll leave the country if some event you don’t like happens, quite another to actually do it. Just ask Paul Daniels.
But let’s, for the sake of argument, assume that 25,000 will leave. As it happens, 25,000 isn’t a lot. Not for a country of 60,587,300. If those 25,000 leave, there will be people to replace them. Plenty of people.
Because the right wing scare-tactic-cum-threat is only effective if we believe that those 25,000 are irreplaceable. That anyone who fills their shoes will by necessity be inferior. This is closely related to the assumption that people who make loads of money do so because they are incredibly hardworking, incredibly talented, and the absolutely the best at what they do.
Unfortunately, this isn’t true. Whether a person gets to the top of a profession will be mostly to do with luck (e.g. being in the right place at the right time to make the right contacts for the right deal when the market was just right) and background (e.g. having loving, caring parents who paid for private education and who provided the contacts for that first job in the City). It will have far less to do with hard work, raw talent and being the best. That’s why the class of your birth more than anything else determines (and can be used to predict) your future socio-economic success.
Don’t get me wrong, a lot of high earners do work hard, are very talented, and some may well be the best at what they do. But it’s just wrong to think that all 25,000 who the Guardian predicts to leave the UK are both the best, and irreplaceable.
To illustrate this point, I’ll draw on my university experience. For the record, I read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford, after attending state comprehensive (Christ the King, Southport) and state sixth form (King George V, Southport). Now, entrance to Oxford is based solely on academic merit. That principle was upheld to the absolute best of the tutor’s ability at my college (Balliol) as far as I was ever aware. Yet I can instantly think of a dozen people I studied along side who, when they made it to Oxford, simply weren’t up to scratch. They lacked the raw intellectual ability, and in some cases no matter how hard they worked, just never cut it.
That’s kind of inevitable; mistakes will always be made. But here’s the rub: the vast majority of them went to private school. In fact, I struggle to think of any example of a person I met educated in the state sector who made it to Oxford and then simply lacked the raw ability, vis-à-vis their peers, in terms of intellectual ability.
Which is not to say that all students educated privately weren’t up to scratch. On the contrary, some of the brightest and very best that I had the privilege to study alongside came from the private sector. The point is, in a college with a 50-50 ratio between private and state educated students, the number of undergraduates who arrived from the private sector and turned out not to be up to scratch vastly outweighed the number from the state sector.
Entry to Oxford is based on perceived merit at the application stage, and the vast majority of tutors do their absolute best to ensure they select candidates only on grounds of merit. Nonetheless, a disproportionate number of below-par students from the private sector make it in (because they spend years being prepped and trained by their schools for Oxbridge admissions, schools who dedicate hours to the process which the state sector simply doesn’t have, amongst other things).
What’s the lesson here? It’s simply that there is no guarantee that because a person makes it to the top – be it studying at Oxford or earning a huge salary as a captain of industry – that they are the best. Plenty of people get to the top when better people were passed up in their favour.
So even if 25,000 do leave the UK, out of a population of 60,587,300, we will have absolutely no problem replacing them. The 25,000 may be good – but they’ll never be irreplaceable. And guess what? Many of them may not even have been that good at all. They may simply have been the beneficiaries of nepotism, cronyism and sheer brute luck. Those might not even be brains that are being drained, just lucky members of an old boy’s network that keeps the rich rich.
Why We Shouldn’t Care Even If There Is A Brain Drain
But again, for the sake of argument, let’s not only suppose that 25,000 will leave the UK, let’s also suppose – although it is not true – that those 25,000 were the absolute best at their jobs. Nobody could possibly replace them, let’s say. They were so damn good that their successors will only ever be pale imitations.
Should we be alarmed?
No. For consider: these 25,000 are such greedy, self-interested individuals that they are prepared to completely relocate outside of the UK on the grounds that they are wholly unprepared to pay a fair contribution to the upkeep of a society which allowed them to generate their enormous wealth in the first place. They would rather leave the country than help that country and the people who are not as fortunate as themselves.
Do we really want those sorts of people to stick around? Think of how they must run their industries or organisations or whatever it is they do! Think of how they must treat their staff, their neighbours, the people they pass on the tube! Think of how they must make their investment decisions or plan their marketing strategy! They are operating with a mindset by which they are prepared to emigrate rather than pay more for society’s upkeep in the name of fairness. One shudders to think how they make decisions in their working lives…and the consequences for the rest of us.
In which case, even if they are “the best” at what they do, should we really consider what they do worthy of the label “best”? Would we not rather have some other people in their place? People who are prepared to pay a fair contribution to society, and will transpose that mindset into their working decisions and social interactions?
So here’s what I think: if there is a Brain Drain, it will be very small. As for that small number of “brains” that get drained, it’s no skin off our collective nose. We don’t want people like them around anyway.
April 23, 2009
Happy Dragon Murdering Day
Beware ye True Patriots the propaganda of Scottish Devils.
April 22, 2009
VAT – What’s Not Being Said
Over at Liberal Conspiracy a much shorter version of the following piece can be found. Here I supply a longer, more detailed version for anybody wanting to really get stuck in.
In 1990, tens of thousands of angry Britons protested against the Poll Tax. Their objection was simple: it is wrong to levy a flat tax on all individuals regardless of income. That a worker barely scraping together £10,000 a year should pay the same contribution as a millionaire was so manifestly wrong that men and women took to the streets – and in some cases, rioted – to voice their discontent.
Yet the Thatcher government which proposed the Poll Tax also oversaw drastic increases in another tax, one which is arguably as regressive as the Poll Tax: the Value Added Tax (VAT).
Before getting into the politics, let’s cover the background. VAT is a simple concept: it is a tax on business transactions, charged at the point of sale in respect of goods and services, and in the UK is levelled as a percentage. At present, the “standard” rate of VAT in the UK is 15%. So if some item is priced by a retailer at £100 pre-VAT, the customer will pay £115 at the point of transaction.
VAT was adopted in the UK in 1973 as a condition of entry into the EEC, thus replacing Purchase Tax and Selective Employment Tax[1]. In 1979, the UK had three rates of VAT. A zero percent rate existed on specified items – including children’s clothing and food – which were deemed exempt for “clearly defined social reasons”[2]. In other words, these goods were so important to ordinary people’s well-being that it was deemed wrong for the state to increase the financial burden of citizens by increasing their price. The other two rates were set at a basic rate of 12.5% on “luxury” items, and a reduced rate of 8% charged on most other goods and services.
In 1979, when Thatcher came to power, Chancellor Geoffrey Howe increased both of these non-zero rates to a single rate of 15%. This was to partially offset the impact of large cuts to the Basic and Higher Rates of Income Tax, and was portrayed as a deliberate move aimed at shifting the burden of taxation from earnings to consumption[3]. In 1991, Conservative Chancellor Norman Lamont increased the rate to 17.5%.
VAT stayed at 17.5% under the rest of John Major’s premiership. However, in the 2001 budget Gordon Brown declared that a reduced rate of 5% VAT would be introduced for certain goods, including energy-saving products, women’s sanitary products, and some health products (like smoking-cessation patches)[4]. Furthermore, in December 2008 as a response to the worsening economic situation, the Government implemented a cut in the standard rate to 15%, in a bid to boost consumption.
OK, that’s the history lesson over. Now for the politics.
VAT is an extremely regressive tax. It affects the poor more than it affects the rich. This is for the simple reason that if you have less disposable income, a percentage tax levied at the point of sale will have a greater impact upon you.
Imagine two individuals, each heading off to buy a new washing machine. Let’s call the first individual Sarah, and suppose she has a disposable income of £100. Let’s call the other person Michele, and imagine she has a disposable income of £10,000. Now, for the sake of our example, let’s suppose that there is only one washing machine on the market, and that it costs £60 pre-VAT. If Sarah and Michele both buy a washing machine at the pre-VAT rate, Sarah is left with £40, Michele with £9,940. Now let’s add in a VAT rate of 17.5%: the total point-of-sale transaction cost will be £70.50. This will leave Sarah with £29.50 – £10.50 less than she would have had if VAT were 0%. Michele is left with £9,929.50 – again, £10.50 less than she would have had if VAT were 0%.
The important difference should, however, be clear: the loss of £10.50 is far more significant to Sarah – who is left with just £29.50 – than it is to Michele, who is left with £9,929.50. That’s why VAT is a regressive tax: its impact is greater upon the poor than it is upon the rich.
So it’s worth noting that VAT isn’t that dissimilar to the Poll Tax. The same rate is levied upon everyone, regardless of income – even though the resulting financial impact will be more keenly felt the poorer a person is. Indeed, the Tory’s successful implementation of higher VAT rates was perhaps precisely what gave Thatcher the impetus to introduce the Poll Tax. Britons had already accepted increases in a tax that regressively impacted upon the poorest in society, so why not give them more of the same? The added irony, of course, is that the failure of the Poll Tax led to the increased rate of VAT in 1991, intended to provide revenue for the “Community Charge Reduction Scheme” which aimed to assist local authorities suffering from the fall-out due to massive levels of defaulting on the Poll Tax[5].
So we have seen that VAT is a regressive tax, whose impacts are more keenly felt the poorer a person is. The Tories knew this when they increased VAT rates, deliberately employing VAT as an alternative to progressive rates of taxation such as scaled income tax with higher bands for higher earners. In plain English: the Tories thought the poor should see their tax burden go up, whilst the rich saw theirs go down.
Labour’s record on VAT thus looks – compared to its record on many other things – comparatively good. The decision to reinstate a reduced rate of 5% in 2001 was arguably an act of progressive taxation. The decision to cut the standard rate last December was also a progressive move – whatever Labour’s motives for the cut.
Yet this aspect of the VAT cut has hardly been publicised. The rightwing media has (generally) lambasted it as a “waste of money”[6]. David Cameron has gleefully added to this by citing comments from various European finance ministers and leaders criticising the VAT cut. Yet the leftwing media’s reply has broadly been to back the cut on grounds of being part of a wider economic stimulus – and here Brown has employed his “an extra £20 in each person’s pocket”[7] soundbite to good effect.
But what about the point that the VAT cut is desirable because it represents a reduction in a highly regressive tax regime that disproportionately affects the poor? Certainly the point has been made, for example over at Socialist Unity[8]. But if you stick terms like “VAT cut progressive” into Google News, it’s very hard to find discussion of the issue in “mainstream” news sources (though a piece from a Guardian blog produces food for thought[9]).
What I’m trying to say here is not that the VAT cut’s importance for progressive taxation hasn’t been discussed, just that it certainly hasn’t been at anything like the forefront of reaction by politicians or the media.
Which is a great shame. Firstly, because it represents an increasingly missed opportunity for all those who not only believe regressive taxation is morally objectionable, but who also believe the present situation – namely, a broad acceptance of VAT by people who would and did revolt against the Poll Tax – will only change if there is open public debate about the vices and virtues of different tax regimens.
Secondly, because Labour had a genuine opportunity to take action on behalf of the poor, and in turn to publicly profess a commitment to helping the most hard-up in society. Labour could have revealed the Tories as the party of the rich, for the rich. They could have presented themselves as something different.
Except that such a course of action would require the Labour government of the past 10 years to have been something different from its Tory predecessor, at least in any substantial sense. Given that this is the Premiership of the 10p Tax, the silence from Labour on the merits of a VAT cut being anything more than a consumer stimulus may in fact speak volumes.
[1] http://www.politics.co.uk/briefings-guides/issue-briefs/economy/taxation/vat/value-added-tax-$366603.htm
[2] Ibid
[3] Ibid
[4] http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/VAT/forms-rates/rates/goods-services.htm#1
[5] http://www.politics.co.uk/briefings-guides/issue-briefs/economy/taxation/vat/value-added-tax-$366603.htm
[6] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1088818/VAT-cut-waste-millions-shops-pay-implement-changes.html
[7] http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090311/debtext/90311-0003.htm
[8] http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=3112
[9] http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/apr/08/who-gains-most-from-vat-cut-liberal-democrats
April 21, 2009
Is Gordon Brown Serious?
So Brown has tried to silence expenses furore, with the Government today announcing that the “second home” allowance will be scrapped, amidst a general overhaul of MPs’ expenses.
Harriet Harman has given a lengthy statement laying out the proposals. By the way, word inside Westminster is that Harman was bullied into making the statement (a rumour which may or may not be true), which includes the following:
A. Flat-rate Allowance. We propose that, for MPs representing constituencies outside London, the Personal Additional Accommodation Expenditure (commonly known as the ‘second home’ allowance) should be abolished and be replaced by a flat-rate daily allowance, based on actual attendance at Westminster on parliamentary and government business or the business of the Opposition frontbenches. This will be limited to the Parliamentary session or a maximum number of days.
Now, I could be horribly confused here, so do correct me if i’m wrong. But surely basing a flat-rate allowance on number of days spent in Parliament is mad.
The MPs who will spend the least number of days in Parliament are likely to be those whose constituencies are furthest away. After all, if an MP lives a considerable distance from London (let’s say for the sake of argument, more than 150 miles), then they will not be able to “pop in” to Parliament. Assuming that they wish to be frequently present both in their constituency and in Parliament so as to do the best job for constituents, they will have to undertake lengthy journeys planned in advance.
So those MPs whose constituencies are far away from Parliament are likely to be those who spend the fewest days in Parliament, because they are the ones who have to travel furthest to get there. I mean come on, it’s just not feasible for MPs from, say, Scotland or Northumbria to commute to London several times a week. They will come down for a chunk of time – say 3-4 days – and then spend the rest in their constituency.
Yet those MPs are precisely those who need assistance living in London. They need their second homes, because in order to properly represent their constituents they need a place to live both in the constituency and in London - and they are the ones who will suffer under the proposed reforms.
I’m not trying to say that the expenses system and the second home allowance don’t need to come under review and reform. The evidence of recent times is that they certainly do. And I know that not all MPs are dedicated enough to travel back and forth between London and their constituency on a regular basis - but many do.
So unless I’m getting things completely backwards, this is a wrong-headed proposal which will hurt the MPs who genuinely need a second home in order to do their job properly, whilst not affecting those who have abused the second home system because they already live in London (and so will be able to attend Parliament the most).
In short, this looks like bare-faced, rushed, ad-hoc populism designed to placate a salivating media which smells the blood of a dying government.
Can somebody please prove me wrong? Seriously. I’m struggling to to believe that I can possibly have gotten this right.
