General Chat

Is there any point having a Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, I ask this because of the recent expenses scandal surrounding the Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport Maria Miller, as this shows once again, that MP's cannot be trusted to regulate themselves.

It also shows, that the appointment of a Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, one of whose tasks is to investigate complaints about MP's who have been accused of breaking the rules, was nothing but a deliberate ploy to fool Joe Public - because it appears that any recommendation made by the Commissioner can be overruled by the Commons Committee on Standards.

This what happened in the case of Maria Miller, the Commons Committee on Standards, agreed she should apologise for trying to thwart the investigation of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, but that she should only pay back a fraction of the amount the Parliamentary Commissioner had recommended.

I note that before becoming Culture Secretary Maria Miller worked for Iain Duncan Smith at the DWP as the Minister for Disabled People from 2010 to 2012, so I wonder if she would say - that anyone who has wrongly claimed benefits, should get away with just making an apology and paying back a fraction of what they wrongly claimed, or is that option only available to politicians?

Yet again this is another example that highlights David Cameron's famous words "we are all in this together - this latest debacle shows that they certainly are ;-)

There is a lot more to come out about this woman who has made an awful lot of money out of being an MP.

It seems to me that if you are an MP you can steal from the Electorate (Your Employer) with Impunity and get away with it by saying Sorry I made a Mistake( I/E I got caught) I don,t think that would wash i Industry or anywhere else,Your collar would be felt by the law and there is no way you would keep your job. Call me Dave should get rid of her and others who do this. It may well lose him the next election if he does,nt.**M**

The Prime Minister David Cameron has preached at great lengths about the need for transparency in government, he is on record as having said, that transparency allows people to hold politicians to account.

If we are to believe his views on the need for transparency, why is it, that yesterday, when he was asked questions about Maria Miller, that he vigorously defended the right of MP's to regulate themselves.

Personally I think the promises of senior politicians, of all political persuasions, are more opaque than transparent, because when they say they are going to do this or do that, what they end up doing never bears any resemblance to what they said they were going to do.

When David Cameron became Prime Minister he vowed to clean up Westminster - what happened to that promise :-S

OFTG. He could,nt find a Mrs. Mop. :-)

I think he has shown himself to be a weak prime minister who lacks judgement and who will need a dredger, not a Mrs Mop, to get out of the hole he is digging for himself.