Thanks for your comments MSR777.

I always rember being at Manchester once and a lady on the viewing decks was also in tears as a South African 747 took off, carrying her son who was emigrating to SA.

It is about time we moved on from this obsession with MPs pay and expenses.

MPs can no longer claim for second properties (or any accomodation in London if they are London MPs), cleaning, gardening or furniture. Likewise, MPs like the prime minister who have a grace and favour property can’t make any accomodation claims at all.

It is only right that, like any employee, they are able to claim for the expenses that they incur in doing their job. Again, it is right that they can claim for the costs of employing support staff and office accomodation, which all means that they end up claiming for a lot more than many of us who just put in an expenses claim for an ocassional train journey. Speaking of which, they can no longer claim for 1st class train travel.

I’m sorry, but this doesn’t seem to me to be particularly unreasonable.

Claims also have to be submitted to an independent body for authorisation and payment – they can’t do it themselves anymore.

And if you don’t like your MPs outside interests, the answer is simple – don’t for them.

If you want good people in Parliament, you are going to have to pay the sort of salary that will attract good people away from other professions, make sure that they are properly rewarded and recompensed. I’m not sure when you look at what a GP can earn, for example, the present system does this.

All this continual talk of paying them average wages or less is doing is providing further disincentive to the good people that we need in Parliament actually pursuing a political career, choosing instead to pursue better money elsewhere.

I would be surprised to see a Conservative / UKIP coalition as well – UKIP have a long way to go before they become credible enough to become electable.

This idea of giving the unemployed £28,000 though would worsen the problem by just increasing the incentive not to work. Why work for £25,000 pa (and pay tax) when you can get £3,000 more for doing nothing!

Much better to use the money to cut the tax that people who work pay (and the tax paid by the firms that employ them), giving people more money to spend and increasing, rather than decreasing, the incentives to work.

Moggy +1 as well.

It would be interesting to know how many of the people criticising him could live with the pressure that he is under through no fault of his own but the accident of birth.

Everywhere he goes, every time he meets someone, he knows that they are likely to have a hidden agenda in wanting to be his friend and meet with him. It must be incredibly difficult to work out who he can trust, and in this example he has been let down very badly by someone.

It would be nice if some of the criticism being directed to him were directed to the people who have no doubt made quite a bit of money out of photos that they were only able to take as a consequence of the trust that he extended towards them.

I don’t think we should blame him so much as the person who took the photos and has now no doubt made a good few quid (or more likely dollars) out of him.

I wouldn’t pretend that everything is perfect.

However, it i impoertant that the judiciary and judges remain independent and can’t be leant on by politicians. Unfortunately that means that sometimes they will get things ‘wrong’, and sometimes they will give decisions that people dont like( albeit how many people commentating on decisions base their criticism on a tabloid news report rather than reading the actual court report). However, this is preferable to a system where they are accountable to politicians or some sort of quango for their decisions.

And I wouldn’t want a system where the CPS have to succede in 100% of cases either. This would see borderline cases not coming to court, and again, especially if added to politically controlled judges, would make it very difficult for the wrongly accused to get justice.

And this idea that it is one rule for the rich and one for the poor – Jonathon Aitken, Jeffrey Archer, Jonathon King, the MP Expense defrauders amongst others may take a different view….

#60 makes a very pertinent point

What is the big secret / conspiracy that he has uncovered to generate all this fawning adulation the intelligent/US hating left are heaping on him?

All he has done is publish information that as many previous posters have suggested has compromised the security of our military operations, and those who are carrying them out.

Wikileaks has not uncovered any big scandals, exposes or corruption. He isn’t a heroic seeker of the truth that his supporters claim – he is a self publicist, with a clear agenda that he is trying to move forward.