cheers, Cogitator.

I’m glad you have met with your accountants; they are people who are professional and with very few exceptions, extremely honest. If they have done their job properly they will have advised you that you need to be greedy in order to succeed. I hope you will avail yourself of what commercial civil liberties you have left.

Everybody it seems has been branded as potentially dishonest by tax law; it used to be only the very rich, masters but not servants. Employees have absolutely no choice but to pay tax. So why are they branded as prospective criminals for something they can never do, that is avoid paying tax? Constitutional abuse is the reason.

If supermarkets were to indicate on shelf labelling what products had tax content then the supermarket would be guilty of promoting tax evasion and its directors fined or imprisoned. Our poorest should have a choice but tax law won’t allow it!

Then there is National Insurance…

http://www.icaew.com/index.cfm?route=157682

What diabolical schemes are afoot?

Should MPs comply with the EC working time directive?

Honesty is not that uncommon in small businesses since they have more to lose, but it is darned difficult when the Creative Accountant-in-Chief keeps messing around with the Budgets, designed to keep the multi-nationals happy whist ignoring the rest of us.

Lord Soley, I have long been an advocate of increasing the salaries of MPs and would be quite happy to see their pay go up to that of a typical company director in charge of 60,000 people, but all allowances must be stopped. This might encourage more people, independent of party influence, to stand in the first place. It is simply ridiculous that the basic salary of most council CEOs is several times greater than that of an MP.

Please don’t go on about the long hours they work. I don’t buy into that argument since most seem to be able to hold second, third or more paying jobs, and find the time to make after dinner speeches and write books/newspaper columns etc.

A pint of honesty, all round, please!

Tiz

With the rise of the professional MP and individuals who have no experience outside of Parliament and no other means of income then remuneration has become no different from any other employment except that in this case the employee holds the purse strings.

What would MPs do if an external tribunal recommended a pay cut? MPs would exercise their sovereignty and ignore the recommendation in a similar way to what has happened with the police.

MPs are also in a sense self-employed in that expense allowances are granted free of tax. The difference here is that dispensations agreed with HMRC are not concurrent with everyday practice.

Another difference is that an accountant is not performing an audit on profit and loss items at year end. I have yet to meet a business owner that has not been creative with their accounting at some time or another.

MPs are not subject to the tyranny of taxation that engulfs the land; even the Monarchy feels obliged to pay taxes. Anybody who fails to pay taxes can be severely fined or imprisoned. This is a constitution abuse by an unaccountable Treasury.

If it were down to me I would insist that constituency party members paid their MP’s salary. This would exert a downward pressure on that salary and an upward pressure on the the MP to take up other forms of income support. I would rather see a beggar draped in rags representing the people than a well heeled politician complete with bling.

When I talk to the younger end they all say that MPs are out to line their own pockets, are keen on becoming brands in their own right and are removed from the everyday experiences of ordinary people.

I sympathise with them! Like lots of other professions especially in health care, the public are indifferent to what goes on. They just expect it to happen and for the greater good of society.

The real truth is that MPs or Peers have no solutions to anything. They are the facilitators of change and it is the people themselves who achieve their own prosperity not Parliament.