To: Sir Thomas Legg (Chairman, Panel of Inquiry into Parliamentary Expenses Abuse)
Dear Sir,

As you will be aware, many of the expense claims under your investigation relate to persons who have presided over legislation regarding criminal activity. Such legislation includes the 'Proceeds of Crime Act' (POCA), and the introduction of the 'Criminal Injuries Compensation Board' (CICB).

Under the POCA legislation, the state is empowered to seize the assets of convicted criminals, including any profits made on such activity which, in the case of many drug-related crimes, may be enormous.

Under the CICB legislation, any victims of crime (be their injuries physical, mental, or financial) may be compensated by the state.

Is it therefore reasonable to assume that all profits made as a result of illegally claimed expenses - for instance, on house purchases made on the back of such claims - will therefore be subject to seizure, given that the alleged criminals have deigned this a fit response for others?

Similarly, it would seem only an extension of logic that the 'victims' of any proven crime (the beleaguered taxpayers) should be entitled to expect compensation for their losses.

Can I be assured that you will consider these points when making your final recommendations?

Further, will you be justifying to the electorate the arbitrary threshold date from which these abuses are to be investigated? Clearly, there has been an institutionalised laxity in the handling of expenses for decades. How many of the country's so-called "Great and Good" are sitting on empires built on nefariously funded foundations?

Yours sincerely,

B3ta Demeter.
(b3ta_demeter, Wed 10 Mar 2010, 16:21, 7 replies)

send this!
or at least get Dan Bull to put a version of it to music.
(Kitcar memeless in a meme filled world, Wed 10 Mar 2010, 16:27, closed)

I imagine they'll conveniently forget about stuff like this...
Politicians seem to have their own 'law' and what they think's right and wrong is way off the scale of us mere mortals.

For example. The bloke who used to rent the flat below me was the Liberal Democrat counciller for Kentish Town. Odious little shit. Not getting involved in the politics of it all, because he didn't seem to bother with it too much either. Just spent all his day lounging round watching daytime TV which I could hear through the floorboards. Then he went off to do some higher education thing and his party agreed it was ok for him to continue being a conciller while he was furthing his education.

Didn't seem to matter that he was studying in Arizona... Made the papers, this did. Weird.
( SpankyHanky, Wed 10 Mar 2010, 16:32, closed)

Yup! I actually personally know (from school/college) three sitting MPs, one of them in the Shadow Cabinet. Two of them are complete egomaniacal wasters. The third is actually a decent bloke, who seems to be there to serve his constituents - oxymoronic though it may seem, he's the Tory.
(b3ta_demeter, Wed 10 Mar 2010, 16:54, closed)

Here's the Arizon kid's full story
for anyone who wants a little more evidence those in authority constantly take the piss

www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23554309-camden-councillor-is-living-in-arizona.do

I'm not saying they all do, but certainly the one's I've come across have been, for want of a better more technical term, wankers.
( SpankyHanky, Wed 10 Mar 2010, 17:01, closed)

Send this to him
And copy in every letters page of every newspaper in all of Christendom.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Wed 10 Mar 2010, 16:32, closed)

Well
It's certainly a good few quid in postage for what good it'll do. No one cares enough. We've all been reduced to a bit of a moan about stuff. Nothing changes no matter how many letters get sent. The government know that the will of the people isn't enough to make an impact and that people will still vote either Tory or Labour in May and life will go on as normal.

Parliament tells us what to do and if we don't like it then tough. The only way you'll see any change in this country is if everyone vote Lib Dem thus breaking the duopoly.

Edit: Also, if I was the editor of the Telegraph, I would've sat on the story until near election time.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Wed 10 Mar 2010, 16:49, closed)

Very well put
Unfortunately, their current mantra is that they were all well inside the rules which had been set... which includes renting a flat near parliament, claiming it is their primary residence and claiming their massive mortgage payments of their "real" house on expenses...and if this is all true, it's not fraud, just very, very dodgy.
(MrOli is ugly, but in the morning you will be sober, Wed 10 Mar 2010, 19:58, closed)