Did the MP's manure come by appointment?

Our local MP, David Heathcote-Amory, recently achieved public notoriety for his parliamentary expenses claim for £380 worth of horse manure – on which an interesting new angle may be about to emerge.

At a party this weekend, a normally reliable source of inside information about local politics was broadcasting the 'news' that our MP’s manure had not been locally sourced from within the constituency (as I’d rather suspected, given the price), but had been imported from a neighbouring county – Gloucestershire, to be precise and, to be even more precise, from Highgrove, the country seat of the Prince of Wales.

If true, this raises the interesting questions of whether one of Prince Charles’s businesses has been a beneficiary of an MP’s expenses claim, whether he know about it and, if so, whether it will have any constitutional implications?

House of Lords expenses: Lord Rees-Mogg on gravy trains

'We must derail the grandfather of gravy trains' read a headline in the Mail on Sunday last weekend above a piece on the European Parliament by Lord Rees-Mogg – who certainly knows a thing or two about gravy trains.

Last year, he managed to clock up a grand total of £41,643 in tax-free ‘allowances’ for his 121 days attendance at the House of Lords. This included £8,923 in ‘office costs’, which raises the interesting question of how many articles he wrote for the Mail and Times in an office subsidised by taxpayers, not to mention how much they paid him for his efforts and whether or not he should now repay at least some of his takings.

Meanwhile, his ‘attendance travel costs’ for the year came to £3,036, for which his chosen ‘mode of transport’ was ‘car’, so we may be paying his congestion charge bills as well (see HERE for further details).

House of Lords expenses

Readers of earlier posts on the House of Lords will know that I’d been hoping that the story about alleged dodgy dealings by some peers might revive the debate about the absurdly undemocratic way in which members of our second chamber are selected.

As it hasn’t done so, maybe the furore about parliamentary ‘expenses’ will redirect attention along the corridor to the House of Cronies again, as the way ‘expenses’ are dished out there seems to be no less virtuous than it is in the House of Commons

The only plus side of the apparently lenient six-month suspension just handed out to Lords Truscott and Taylor is that it will at least save the taxpayer about £50,000 (as their combined allowances claim for last year came to over £100,000).

But there are still plenty of other noble noses in the trough, with questions already being asked about where the likes of Lord’s Lawson, Razzall and Rennard really do have their first and second homes. Meanwhile, I’ve just checked on the claims made by various other Lords I’ve heard of and was amazed to discover that their tax-free ‘allowances’ ranged from £25,000 to £60,000+ a year.

As I don’t have access to the manpower that the Daily Telegraph has been able to devote to exposing MP’s expenses, I now invite readers to do some research into Lords’ expenses for themselves – and, if they feel so inclined, to report back with any interesting findings.

It’s easy enough to check on who’s been claiming what because the full list for the year ending March 2008 is published and can be inspected HERE.

Is the MPs' expenses scandal a hidden legacy of Thatcherism?

In last Thursday's Question Time on BBC1, Margaret Beckett claimed that the existing system of parliamentary expenses was brought in under the Thatcher government in 1983, after a recommendations on a salary increase for MPs by an independent body had been deferred and staggered for 8 years – at which point the additional allowances were brought in ‘in stead of the pay increase’ (see below).

If this is true, it suggests that MPs were explicitly encouraged to subscribe to the culture of greed that Thatcherism is so often accused of having fermented during the 1980s, and it will be interested to wee whether this is confirmed in any forthcoming investigations of the system.

Rhetoric wins applause for questioners on BBC Question Time

It wasn't just some of David Dimbleby's questions that got applauded on last night's Question Time (see previous post). Some of the questions also won bursts of applause, which was hardly surprising in the case of those who used the rhetorical techniques that are most likely to trigger a positive audience response.

In this first example, the question includes a contrast between ‘their own money’ and ‘our country’ that triggers a burst of applause before Dimbleby or anyone else has time to say anything:



The speaker in this next one deploys three rhetorical techniques in quick succession: a rhetorical question, a three-part list and a contrast.

And, as so often happens when someone combines more than one technique at a time, the applause here exceeds the standard 8 pus or minus 1 second 'normal' burst of applause (by about 2 seconds), thereby underlining the response as a more enthusiastic one than usual:

It was quite explicit. It has to be wholly necessary to do the job as an MP.

[Q] What could be more plainer than that?

[1] They don’t need scatter cushions,
[2] bottles of gin,
[3] plocks.

[A] It’s not the system that’s wrong.
[B] It’s the people - the MPs themselves. [APPLAUSE]



For more about rhetorical techniques and how to use them to get your own messages across, see any of my books (listed in the left-hand margin).

Applause for Dimbleby's questions on BBC Question Time

Two very unusual things happen in these two clips from last night's Question Time on BBC1.

The first is that that David Dimbleby feels liberated enough to phrase his questions in a way that might, in a one-to-one interview with no audience, come across as excessively cheeky and perhaps even biased against Labour (Margaret Becket) and the Liberal Democrats (Ming Campbell).

The second is that the audience comes in and applauds what Dimbleby says before the politicians have had time to start their answers - and are therefore under much more pressure than they would have been if they were being interviewed in a studio with no audience there showing how much they approve of the interviewer's question.