MPs Second Homes

MPs second homes remain a bug bear and now that politicians have started to filter back to the fray with their conferences, it would be good to hear at least one of the parties talk about the scandal of MPs expenses.

No doubt the fond hope politicians have, is that their abuse of expenses will have been forgotten and they can concentrate on more important issues such as clinging on to what so many believe is their career.

Many MPs do have a need for accommodation closer to London I don't argue against that point. (Other than the whole system is wrong, but that is well know by blog readers). But taking the starting point that we do have this system and we do have Westminster, there can be little doubt that MPs need to be able to get to there.

What is absolutely wrong, is that MPs purchase property, which is subsidised or paid for outright by the tax payer and the MP then takes the profit. This is completely different to House flipping, which is circumvention of Capital Gains tax payments. MPs use the system to make fat profits out of taxpayers when they sell the property the tax payer has paid for and this is plainly wrong under even the most cursory of glances.

There is no excuse at all for MPs being permitted to take 100% ownership of a home which is paid for out of public funds. This abuse must be stamped out immediately.

MPs must not be permitted to deflect the argument, by saying they now no longer are permitted to flip houses, that is a personal tax issue. They must not be able to pocket the profits on a house sale which has been funded in anyway by allowances.

An MPs second home paid for by taxpayers is not an MPs home, it belongs to the taxpayer.

image ( 'Going Once' Colour Edition by STATIC) courtesy of another wall

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Politicians in a social network

The concept of British politicians understanding social networking, is perhaps one of the greatest jokes this year.

We have MPs who don't understand the contempt with which they are held, voting as Speaker a man who held a Directorship of a Caymans Island registered Company and flipped his houses, while at the same time they pretend to push hard for a change in off shore tax-havens whilst lambasting house flippers.

Perhaps they really are too thick to understand how to fill in their expenses claims.

The Labour Party has chosen a woman by the name of Kerry McCarthy, as their 'New media expert', it would appear from that choice, she is the Labour Party 'expert', I could find people expressing more coherence drunkenly swaying at a late night party.

Already dubbed by many of her fellow MPs as the twitter Tsar, which to be fair to her she doesn't like. 'But we are getting back in touch', her colleagues proclaim. Tsar - some basic knowledge of history would indicate how far out of touch and offensive this term can be.

But still they push forward, with the Labour Party anointing Kerry as the Guru on 'new media', although she seems to think that social networking consists of twitter, facebook, linkedin and a nod to Youtube, hardly new media.

Twitter, according to McCarthy is the place to be, Facebook is just a place to communicate with friends and linkedin is the place for professional contacts. The opines of an out of touch politico.

Apparently, according to the 'new media' expert you and I will head off and find these politicians on their blogs and social networking sites, while all they have to do is sit and wait for our visit.

They want to teach us how to use the internet responsibly, they don't even appear to understand what it is?

If McCarthy really expects people outside the Westminster tent to engage with Politicians and in particular the Labour Party she needs to learn about Social Networking. To dismiss Facebook as a no go area demonstrates how ridiculous and out of touch politicians really are with the real world.

I doubt many politicians will understand the satire, or references to social networking on the following video.

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Censoring airbrushed photographs in advertising

The Liberal Democrats are calling for advertising aimed at people under the age of 16 to be completely prohibited from airbrushing adverts, or for a disclosure notice to be placed next to the adverts aimed at older age groups.

This is yet another example of MPs desire to meddle being without the slightest thought. Jo Swinson claims that "Liberal Democrats believe in the freedom of companies to advertise but we also believe in the freedom of young people to develop their self-esteem and to be as comfortable as possible with their bodies, without constantly feeling the need to measure up to a very narrow range of digitally manipulated shapes and sizes."



The top picture is of Jo on the liberal democrats campaign for Gender Balance

The one, below, is not quite so posed, any reason the lower photograph isn't that being used, it appears to be the same clothes, so may have even been taken on the same day?

The idea that digitally enhanced photographs can somehow be controlled by legislation, speaks volumes for the simplistic notion MPs have of what really matters.

Are the Liberal Democrats suggesting that make-up shouldn't be worn by subjects in photographs, what about lighting effects, backgrounds, the pose itself? When will MPs stop trying to interfere with the minutiae of everyone else's life and get on with proposing policies for aspects which matter.

The suggestion that the use of airbrushed images in advertising is somehow corrupting misses the point. They need to look at what they are trying to achieve and work to a solution from there. The easy headline of banning airbrushed photographs will do nothing, if they are trying to stop people feeling the need to look one way or another. The product being advertised is the core issue, not the image surrounding it. Though that is not in any way to suggest they need to stick their noses into product advertising, it is intended to demonstrate the backward thinking of Politicians.

An advertising agency would work round such a ridiculous legislation, with consummate ease and the Lib/Dem objective, ridiculous as it is, would have been missed by a mile.

Thanks Jo, but no thanks, enough meddling. Time to change the image on the gender balance website, as it appears to contravene a few of these policy document guidelines.

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Bercow looks above the parapet

Bercow, the new speaker of the House of Commons, has noticed that people are pretty fed up with the £25 a day unreceipted subsistance allowance that went through on a nod and has decided to call for a meeting of the members estimate committee next week.

Already Nick Harvey is claiming the story of the allowance has been blown out of proportion and all this was agreed way back in March.

Strange how MPs have been managing to claim on this allowance, but none of them actually bothered to pipe up and mention that the subsistance allowance didn't require any receipts. Even stranger it wasn't until the story gathered pace today that Bercow noticed the problem.

Who said Politics in the UK couldn't become more odious?

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Ed Balls and literacy levels

Ed Balls, has set himself up with a twitter account, which in itself is in my opinion a good thing, as he exposes himself to immediate reaction to his comments and a way for people to directly communicate with him.

Increasingly MPs are doing this in the UK and theoretically it can only be to the good. However in exposing themselves to this level of scrutiny, they also need to take responsibility and be aware that their actions on Social networking sites, provides an insight to some of their actions they may wish to keep out of the public glare. In other words, they should behave responsibly.

Today saw Ed Balls, make a bit of a twitter gaff. He evidently decided that he needed to generate more followers, so set himself up with one of those 'get lots of followers on twitter' sites. The value of which is a different debate and open to personal preference.

Having decided to join one of these sites, a twitter user needs to know exactly who they are dealing with. Not only does the particular site in question, require your log-in details for your twitter account, itself something that can be problematical, but in this particular instance the 'contact us page' leads to a 404 error page, the 'about us page' tells you nothing about the company itself, but is full of typographic errors.

About
XXX (site name removed as I have no wish to promote this site) is a tools website for twitter. Here you will gain more followers for your account. This concept is quit simple and works very well. The 1st thing you will need to do is login your account (The same info as your twitter credentials) Then after loging in your taken to page with a list of vip members and regular members. The vip members are paid members and will gain the most followers on our site. Right now vip members are getting anywhere betwenn 400-1500 followers a day. The regular members are free members. Before anyone can join this site you are obligated to click and follow all the vip members and the last 20 regular members. After doing the following you can then join the site to get more followers.

These two problem pages should lead to alarm bells, but evidently to Ed Balls this wasn't the case. So he decided to sign up for an account, despite not reading the terms of service, which do actually lead to a link with some meaningful, if incorrectly spelt information. It is only a 7 point terms of service, so hardly onerous.

T.O.S
1. You agree to submit your twitter accout credentials.

2. You agree to allow us to store your account information in our database.

3. You agree your account will be used to automatically tweet an update on your account for promotional purposes every 6 hours with the exception of VIP members.

4. You agree upon loging in you allow us tweet an update on your twitter for promotion.

5. You agree when buying vip there are no refunds or returns what so ever.

6. You agree to allow us up to 6 hours to put your twitter user name on the vip section.

7. You agree if you spam our site you will be banned from our service forever with out hesitation.


But Ed appears not to have read this and when the spam messages began to appear:

I just become a member of this AWESOME site that gets you TONS of followers: http://XXX

unsuprisingly followers were not amused.

He was suprised by this, sending out the following message:

Apologies to all.. I followed a link and it has spammed everyone. Still learning.. RT @deburca: Be aware of all of these automated tweets!

I accept people make mistakes, yes even I do, but this process provides an insight into the mind of this man.

He doesn't check site validity prior to signing up, he doesn't read T.O.S. despite them being very simple and easily seen.

I wonder whether Ed Balls is someone we should trust to prepare and scrutinize legislation. If he can't read a 7 point Terms of Service, how on earth does he manage with reams of documentation?

Is it any wonder the Learning Skills Council overspend occured? Balls introduced legislation to raise the education leaving age from 16 to 18, yet failed to give schools and colleges the money they needed to make these reforms a reality.

He has shown himself someone as not fit to tell other people how to use the Internet, as he doesn't grasp the reality of not checking out a site, or the need to read the T.O.S.

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