Monday, 18 May 2009

A Permanent Windfall

What causes should benefit from the windfall fund that the estimable Dai Davies wishes to set up out the monies repaid by errant MPs? And why?

Meanwhile, here in North-West Durham, voters will have the opportunity of a permanent windfall in the form of a David Lindsay Community Trust, into which at least one organisation supportive of each of the policies (except probably the MP's office one) listed here and here paid, there was other fundraising activity locally, and the whole pot was divided equally at the end of each financial year among a community project in each of the old Wards.

That way, everyone would get something for having me as MP, but those who did most to keep me there would get that little bit more out of my own pocket. And I myself wouldn't make a penny. In fact, depending on the tax and NI rates, I'd lose somewhere between thirty and forty grand per year.

16 comments:

  1. Is this really the time? With forthcoming police investigations of MPs, it could go badly for you.

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  2. Well exactly. Its your critics who are guilty of criminal harassment and in one case setting his brother in law onto you as a violent enforcer. That one had to be dealt with by the parliamentary commissioner for standards as I recall.

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  3. It certainly did have to be.

    And it certainly was.

    Speaking of the criminal harassment, they are trying to post their material on here again. They still can't comprehend that no one believes their lies. They are so used to utterly uncritical obedience. But no one does believe them.

    Not Coffee House, which is moderated, and on which comments by me are published as good as daily, whereas I would have been banned for life if there had been the slightest truth in their claims. As it is, their attempts to make them are removed within seconds of my complaining.

    Not Comment Is Free, which has actually PAID me to write for it in the period since these ridiculous alleged offences took place.

    Not even Harry's Place, quite manifestly.

    No one.

    And of course, at the end of the day, they are such disagreeable people. Whereas, I suppose, I am dear old David Lindsay.

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  4. "That way, everyone would get something for having me as MP, but those who did most to keep me there would get that little bit more out of my own pocket"

    I would be very careful about using phrases like this. No need to hand ammunition to them.

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  5. To whom? This is called politics. Real politics. For the voters, not for yourself.

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  6. Some people would rush to the interpretation that paying people out of your own pocket for their votes smacked of bribing the electorate. Nonsense, of course, sheer nonsense. But in today's atmosphere, mud will tend to stick.

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  7. Oh, we're back to the hopelessly naive thickies who have been very expensively educated far beyond their natural intelligence, are we? Oh, well, I suppose you have nothing else to do any more. At least you are so rich anyway than you won't actually starve to death after the Election.

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  8. Considering where you got the idea, David, you might want to be a bit more careful.

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  9. It came to me independently, although I don't doubt that plenty of other people could say the same thing.

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  10. Yeah, independently on this blog!

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  11. I write this blog, dear. It's me.

    I am happy to clear up your obvious confusion on that matter.

    Bless.

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  12. You can't write all the comments though?

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  13. Evidently not.

    Back on topic, please.

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  14. I thought you were going to take the full wage for the job? There was a thread about it, wasn't there?

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  15. A while back, yes.

    I still think that the internal logic of that position is sound. I am very concerned at the potential present drift back towards a restriction of Parliament to the independently wealthy.

    But I'm not proposing to take no pay at all. And Dave Nellist managed to win Backbencher of the Year, voted for by other MPs and awarded by The Spectator, at the height of Thatcherism.

    So my main fear, that anyone who did this would be a pariah among other MPs and thus hopelessly ineffective, does not seem to be borne out by the facts of still quite recent history.

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