Society & Culture2 mins ago
Shami Chakrabarti
Said on 'Any Questions',tonight, that MPs were 'forced' to fiddle their expenses because of poor wages. She went on to say that they should get their 11% pay rise so they don't 'have' to fiddle their expenses again.
Anyone agree?
Anyone agree?
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No matter how poorly paid you may feel, no, nobody is 'forced' fiddle expenses. I think that's called dishonesty. And 11% increase in salary is an insult to all others earning a living with hardly any, if any, increase. Have they all become better at their jobs, got additional qualifications - you know, the usual things which merit an increase?
The chairman of the independent body says that the 11 per cent is met by other cuts; in pensions, expenses permitted, various perks and freebies etc; so that the net result is no cost to the taxpayer. Not that anyone bothers with that; they go with the headline instead.
It is an open secret that previous governments dared not have MPs voting increases in pay, so they allowed MPs to make up the difference by claiming expenses and other benefits. So this woman is right; that was the thinking.
It is an open secret that previous governments dared not have MPs voting increases in pay, so they allowed MPs to make up the difference by claiming expenses and other benefits. So this woman is right; that was the thinking.
No, svejk, but when what you call theft is connived at by the authorities, it may not be strictly theft. It is consensual taking.. It's only when the public searchlight was brought to bear; and remember the extraordinary efforts which were made to stop fulll disclosure of every MPs expenses claims and what editing, redacting, was tried on such documents as were released, even to the extent of hiding where MPs had their various homes; that anything was done.
Well, if someone who decides and dishes out the money doesn't care what you claim, seeing it as a back door way of making up the salary which you can't vote for without extremely adverse comment, that sounds pretty consensual to me ! If your boss said that they weren't increasing your salary but they would ignore expenses representing what they would pay you , your getting it wouldn't be theft: that you did dishonestly [ it can't be dishonest if the boss knowingly allows itl, or even if you genuinely and reasonably believe they consented to it, though mistaken in that belief] appropriate property belonging to another with the intent of permanently depriving them of it
If I owned a bun shop, fred, and I said to the counter staff "I don't pay you much so take a few of those (soon to be stale) buns home with you". That to my simple mind would be 'consensual taking'. Who empowered the MPs to take the buns home? It certainly wasn't the bun owners, ie, us.
Would it constitute a defence in court to say a manager or foreman turned a blind eye to you stealing from your employer.
Would it constitute a defence in court to say a manager or foreman turned a blind eye to you stealing from your employer.
It would be a defence if you genuinely believed the fact was that you were given due authority, in other words you believed that the manager gave you authority and had the power to do so by virtue of his office (or of course you believed that the boss himself had personally and specifically so directed).
I was once called upon by the Court of Appeal to define dishonesty, a definition which they adopted. Was the test objective or subjective? A defendant believes certain facts to be true; for example, he believes he is taking his own umbrella when he is mistaken and taking someone else's; the jury must decide if on those facts he believes are true he is being, on their common sense view, dishonest (plainly he believes he is taking his own property and so he isn't). It is what he genuinely believes that matters not what the facts really are. [The umbrella example is one that Lord Justice Lawton put in argument]
Now, applying that to the case of MPs, they have a defence. Those who were successfully prosecuted could not possibly have genuinely believed that they had been given authority to claim what they did nor that the person in authority would have granted the expenses claim if he knew the full facts.
I was once called upon by the Court of Appeal to define dishonesty, a definition which they adopted. Was the test objective or subjective? A defendant believes certain facts to be true; for example, he believes he is taking his own umbrella when he is mistaken and taking someone else's; the jury must decide if on those facts he believes are true he is being, on their common sense view, dishonest (plainly he believes he is taking his own property and so he isn't). It is what he genuinely believes that matters not what the facts really are. [The umbrella example is one that Lord Justice Lawton put in argument]
Now, applying that to the case of MPs, they have a defence. Those who were successfully prosecuted could not possibly have genuinely believed that they had been given authority to claim what they did nor that the person in authority would have granted the expenses claim if he knew the full facts.
Perhaps. But if he tried to hide said umbrella wouldn't that give a lie to the 'genuine mistake' defence?
Anyway, I can imagine the peer pressure, coupled with loose accounting would be very hard for any of us to resist. It was Shami Chakrabati used the word 'fiddle' (twice). It was a question about her views rather than what the 'honourable' members got up to.
Anyway, I can imagine the peer pressure, coupled with loose accounting would be very hard for any of us to resist. It was Shami Chakrabati used the word 'fiddle' (twice). It was a question about her views rather than what the 'honourable' members got up to.
Everything is evidential , svejk. The behaviour of the defendant gives a clue to what he was thinking. Curiously, that is why a man fiddling the books may not be guilty of theft. It may be that the rest of his behaviour suggests that he is not stealing; he is not hiding money or goods. That is when we charge him with what we traditionally term 'false accounting'. He may be fiddling the books but his reason may be that he is incompetent, and thinks that, if his books pass muster , he'll avoid getting the sack, so, realising that his books aren't accurate and don't match reality, he alters them or makes false entries so they appear to be right. So he's then charged with making the false entries, not theft
And clearly the man who hides the umbrella may be doing so because, when he appropriates it, he knows it is a far more expensive umbrella than his own; it all suggests that his claimed belief is not genuine. However strange the mistake, the test is of genuiness of belief, but, obviously, the stranger it appears to be, the less likely it is that his belief is genuine. A claimed belief which is manifestly unreasonable is not going to be sufficient
The manager who turns a blind eye to an overt, obvious, taking of the firm's property does not necessarily make the taker dishonest. It may be construed by the taker as implied consent, given with authority; otherwise why did the manager not do anything ? But you can rely on the jury, who see the witnesses, probably including the defendant, to say how likely it is that the taker thought that, rather than that the manager was dishonest and the defendant was being equallly so. They might think the defendant was acting innocently, but that won't be often !
And clearly the man who hides the umbrella may be doing so because, when he appropriates it, he knows it is a far more expensive umbrella than his own; it all suggests that his claimed belief is not genuine. However strange the mistake, the test is of genuiness of belief, but, obviously, the stranger it appears to be, the less likely it is that his belief is genuine. A claimed belief which is manifestly unreasonable is not going to be sufficient
The manager who turns a blind eye to an overt, obvious, taking of the firm's property does not necessarily make the taker dishonest. It may be construed by the taker as implied consent, given with authority; otherwise why did the manager not do anything ? But you can rely on the jury, who see the witnesses, probably including the defendant, to say how likely it is that the taker thought that, rather than that the manager was dishonest and the defendant was being equallly so. They might think the defendant was acting innocently, but that won't be often !
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