If Parliament were a Company......

[flip_flop]

How long would a company of 650 odd employees survive if there was the level of expenses fiddling, free junkets, promoting people/companies with outside interests for cash and general self serving avarice we see from our elected representatives?

I see the irony was lost on the mortgage fraudster and passport prostitute on Newsnight last night when he was condemning Byers.

[B00]

"How long would a company of 650 odd employees survive if there was the level of expenses fiddling, free junkets, promoting people/companies with outside interests for cash and general self serving avarice we see from our elected representatives?"

Indefinitely if millions of Joe Blogg's were continuesly being fleeced.

[DrFilth]

just like the bbc all bent as a nine bob note.

[jake-the-peg]

I think many companies see huge amounts of dodgy expenses claims, executives of "fact finding" trips and the like.

I'm working for a company where the last 2 chief executives have left after dodgy stock deals

After short blips the stocks still strong

[anotheoldgit]

Well we soon march down to London to stage protests over the least things, mainly about various governments abroad.

Is it not time that we protested outside Westminster about our own politicians? They may be a little more discrete than the foreign kind, but allegedly they have been reported equally corrupt.

[rov1200]

These MPs are so bl00dy crafty and when they get caught with the hands in the till offer themselves up to their own scrutiny panel of MPs so a decision cannot be made elsewhere and which would be more severe. Byers did it yesterday! Jacqie Smith got away with home flipping because she went down this route. As we know she got away scott free.

I notice they are all Blairites. Seeing how the boss feathered his nest must have some influence on his minnows in how to use the system.

[modeller]

The expense racket is common to most companies but they don't make the laws that govern our lives. We are constantly hearing about Westminster but Councils also play the system. A simple example is Twinning of Towns which is an excuse for junketing by the Councillors and their spouses to holiday at our expense.

[sp1814]

I don't think we'd ever get to hear about it, if it were a private company. Only when investigated by outside concerns, or when the market 'has an eppy' do we ever find out the extent of fraud in some of the world's biggest companies.

Enron, for example.

As long as there are people in the viscinity of a trough, there will be snouts primed for a good snuffling.

Yes, we should expect more from our MPs, but by and large, MPs today are no more than executives who've been to the same schools and management seminars as their private sector equivalents.

The days of the conviction politician like Michael Foot, Margaret Thatcher, Enoch Powell and Roy Jenkins are over.

[VHG]

>These MPs are so bl00dy crafty and when they get caught with the hands in the till offer themselves up to their own scrutiny panel of MPs

Yes I notice most MPs involved in the "expenses scandal" seem to have got away with it.

How come Margaret Moran, who designated her boyfiends home in another part of the country as a second home so she could claim expenses on it, seems to have got away with it.

That is just as "criminal" as the MPs who HAVE been charged.