Saturday, May 29, 2010
David Laws and expenses
Craig Murray says "Laws' explanation for his behaviour is that he did not wish to come out as gay. That is his right. Had he therefore not made any second home expenses claims, he would have forfeited £40,000 and deserved great sympathy for the sacrifice made to his domestic privacy. Nobody would have launched an investigation into why the very wealthy David Laws did not make a second home claim. To "protect your privacy" by making taxpayer funded rent payments to your partner against the rules, was always going to be counter-productive. It also involved what I presume (and I do not know) is a further little lie to the Commons that he was renting a bedroom in his partner's house, when it is surely more likely that they share one".
IMO: AFAIK the rule against paying partners in this way was not made or publicised till about 2006. At that point Laws should have stopped claiming payments and this clearly could have been noticed, and that makes more sense of his explanation. Now this would have admittedly made very difficult his further political career, so at that point the matter becomes a question of politics. But then we can reflect that if he is so smart at cutting costs and such a good businessman, who apparently became extremely wealthy by the age of 28 (marriage or criminality been the usual ways), he should have had the street smarts to cover for himself on the financial issue. For example he could have anonymously donated the £40,000 to a charity after 2006, or even to some tax redemption fund. There are almost certainly better ways than that, I write impromptu and certainly know little about such matters. So I do not buy the view about that greedy gay dud that "such a brilliant man should not have to resign". Furthermore there is the even shadier view, even given by the Telegraph I think, that Laws could simply resign now and take the job again when people had forgotten the matter. Now it seems obvious that the whole bunch of UK MPs are largely swindling the general public, and brief known figures are certainly optimistically ridiculously low. So what to do ? Well it could be best to let him parrot on about cuts and even live up to some of his claims but to improve voting procedure enormously NOW and not let these swindling cretins who call themselves MPs get the 5 year compulsory term.
IMO: AFAIK the rule against paying partners in this way was not made or publicised till about 2006. At that point Laws should have stopped claiming payments and this clearly could have been noticed, and that makes more sense of his explanation. Now this would have admittedly made very difficult his further political career, so at that point the matter becomes a question of politics. But then we can reflect that if he is so smart at cutting costs and such a good businessman, who apparently became extremely wealthy by the age of 28 (marriage or criminality been the usual ways), he should have had the street smarts to cover for himself on the financial issue. For example he could have anonymously donated the £40,000 to a charity after 2006, or even to some tax redemption fund. There are almost certainly better ways than that, I write impromptu and certainly know little about such matters. So I do not buy the view about that greedy gay dud that "such a brilliant man should not have to resign". Furthermore there is the even shadier view, even given by the Telegraph I think, that Laws could simply resign now and take the job again when people had forgotten the matter. Now it seems obvious that the whole bunch of UK MPs are largely swindling the general public, and brief known figures are certainly optimistically ridiculously low. So what to do ? Well it could be best to let him parrot on about cuts and even live up to some of his claims but to improve voting procedure enormously NOW and not let these swindling cretins who call themselves MPs get the 5 year compulsory term.
# posted by uv : 2:20 AM
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