Time for a Double Standards Committee ?

[olddutch]

The Express reports “A Cake factory worker who was sacked after 17 years service for eating part of a hazelnut said last night: “I have been treated like a criminal. It’s a joke.” Grandmother Susan Longworth, 53, says she was branded a thief after she absentmindedly popped a piece of nut less than half an inch in size into her mouth as she waited for a conveyor belt to deliver a batch of toffee cakes for her to decorate. After being suspended, she was fired and frogmarched from the premises. She said yesterday: “I’ve never stolen anything in my life and I didn’t see any harm in eating a tiny little bit of hazelnut. It’s just nuts.” Susan, who joined the Park Cake company in Bolton in 1993, added: “I am going to appeal to clear my name but if they offered me my job back tomorrow I wouldn’t take it. I’m not being classed as a thief ”

Compare this to

David Laws who has resigned (and not been sacked) from the Coalition Cabinet (but not resigned as an MP) after revelations that he claimed £40,000 of Taxpayers Money to pay rent to his boyfriend. After this David Cameron writes to David Laws “ You are a good and honourable man. I am sure that, throughout, you have been motivated by wanting to protect your privacy rather than anything else. Your decision to resign from the government demonstrates the importance you attach to your integrity. I hope that, in time, you will be able to SERVE AGAIN as I think it is absolutely clear that you have a huge amount to offer our country”

Should the Government, despite our hard times, now set up yet another Quango - a Double Standards Committee to bring in the same laws for rich and poor alike and ensure they are applied fairly ?

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Continued…….

<still don’t understand your defence of Laws and your lenient viewpoint on the penalties that he, as an expenses cheat, should face> ////That is beacuse you have got yourself all riled up with *ought* to be rather than understanding 'what is' !!! //// Yes Im riled up because of what ought to be (and should have already been in existence long ago) - But isn’t in existence now. Yes I and the majority of the population are sick to the back teeth of cheating politicians who claim privilege and use privilege to fix the rules and law to escape much of what ordinary people would strictly and heavily be punished for - and I cannot understand that you seem at ease with much of it. I don’t have a particular axe to grind over David Laws - he is one of a great number of other MP s who have “got off” entirely - or to some significant degree. Such MP s can (or could) be found in all all parties. I don’t accept that people in privileged MP positions should create privileged rules that exempt them from penalities that would be strictly applied to ordinary people in similar situations in the ordinary World - No double standards !

[olddutch]

Another press snippet of 24 hrs ago

“So the news that David Laws had a secret boyfriend was about par for the course. It wasn't his sexuality which brought him down, it was stealing.
Laws was forced to resign as chief secretary to the Treasury because he trousered £40,000 of taxpayers' money in second home expenses which he funnelled to his gay lover.
His feeble excuse was that he wished to keep his relationship private. Fair enough. In that case he shouldn't have claimed anything. He doesn't need the money, by all accounts, having made enough in the City to retire when he was just 28.

Obviously he didn't know that he was going to turn up in such a high-profile job (he was, after all, a Lib Dem) but he must have known that his claims were dishonest. He had plenty of opportunities to pay back the money by slipping a cheque under the door of the Fees Office.

Scores of other 'honourable' members made substantial repayments after they were caught with their fingers in the Westminster till. Laws wouldn't have been noticed in the stampede to straighten the books. Trying to conflate his wrongdoing into a phoney row about 'homophobia' was never going to fly, as some of the most prominent voices in the gay lobby have to their credit acknowledged.
.
Whether he would have received such compassion and understanding had he been a heterosexual Tory Cabinet member with a mistress on the payroll is another matter.
It is going to be an uncomfortable time for all members of the new coalition government as the dogs of war start sifting through their dustbins and re-examining their expenses claims.

continued

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continued

Laws has stepped down from the Treasury but for now is continuing to sit as an MP. In the spirit of the 'new politics' surely he should offer himself immediately for re-election. After all, he didn't steal from the government, he stole from the taxpayers, including his own constituents.

I've never understood why disgraced ministers forced from office are allowed to continue as MPs.
The as yet unanswered question is: who put him in the frame? Was he the victim of political dirty tricks or was he 'outed' by a spiteful homosexual who resents the idea of prominent gays choosing to stay in the closet?

So for all the talk of acting in the national interest, confronted with their first major political scandal the two parties have acted in their own naked self-interest.

There is also the fact that Alexander avoided paying Capital gains Tax when he sold his flat in London by designating it as his main home - even though for the purposes of claiming parliamentary expenses totalling £37,000 he had maintained it was his second home.

That's precisely the kind of behaviour which cost Hazel Blears her job in the last Labour government. She was forced to write out a cheque to Revenue for the tax she had avoided.

As chief secretary, Desperate Dan will now be responsible for trying to implement the Lib Dem manifesto commitment to raise CgT to 40, or even 50 per cent - even though he played the system to avoid paying it himself.
Naturally, he insists he acted within the rules.

Meet the new politics, same as the old politics" (from another press snippet)

[jackthehat]

May I remind you of your original question ?

<Should the Government, despite our hard times, now set up yet another Quango - a Double Standards Committee to bring in the same laws for rich and poor alike and ensure they are applied fairly ? >

That was the question I attempted to answer when I first posted.

You have since padded out your subsequent responses with 'yes, buts'.
Whether MP's ought to be strictly limited as to what they are able to claim with a legal requirement to set their circumstances down in legal form, the signing of which forms a legally-enforceable 'contract' with both the electorate and the Speakers office is perhaps something they could be advised to adopt.

There's really no point in interminably banging on about what *ought* to happen to them when there is a complete absence of existing legislation to deal with it !

Your two original examples are not comparable, they really aren't; and 'that' is the substance of many of these posts, not just mine.

And you think setting up another Quango will help ?!?!?

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///Whether MP's ought to be strictly limited as to what they are able to claim with a legal requirement to set their circumstances down in legal form, the signing of which forms a legally-enforceable 'contract' with both the electorate and the Speakers office is perhaps something they could be advised to adopt. //// yes, on this you’re getting a little closer now - something that now definitely should adopt

////There's really no point in interminably banging on about what *ought* to happen to them when there is a complete absence of existing legislation to deal with it ! //// you’re not at all close with this - and force me bang on some more - we badly need a complete presence of legislation to deal with it, PDQ

/////Your two original examples are not comparable, they really aren't; and 'that' is the substance of many of these posts, not just mine//// truly there is a relevant connection - the ordinary worker has a strict open set of rules applied for the public good and is summarily dismissed when the rules are breached - the privileged minister has a loose less open set of rules applied and is not summarily dismissed when breached - instead he is allowed to choose whether he resigns or not

/////And you think setting up another Quango will help//// No the dedicated Quango already in existence will do - they should be charged with sharpening the rules to ensure that MP s have strict and proper rules in the same way as the ordinary person does - and that these rules are applied as strictly to all MP s as strict rules are applied to the ordinary person - No more letting MPs “get away with it” that’s the real point

Jack, you’re increasingly going round in circles on much of this stuff and your answers are not progessing the issue in any significant way - suggest we now close our discussion.

[jackthehat]

If you read my answers carefully you'll indeed find I make the same points time after time................in the main because you are failing to understand them.

Agree - discussion ended.

[olddutch]

////If you read my answers carefully you'll indeed find I make the same points time after time................in the main because you are failing to understand them//// Yes I dont understand why you have concentrated on what is legal now - rather than what ought be legal now and amended in the near future - the “Ought” was at the heart of my question and repeatedly emphasised by me in our follow up exchanges.

Anyway, agree - discussion ended