Today the Lords supported an amendment to the Welfare Reform Bill that will add £100m to welfare expenditure. Its meaning is that only households with more than 1 spare bedroom will lose out on benefits. The debate offered graphic examples of the hardship that might be suffered by families if this amendment were defeated and, as some said, the relatively low cost of supporting it. My thoughts turned to the recent announcement that an extra £41m is to be spent on the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics, in addition to the £40m already budgeted for them. The aim is to give a good impression of Britain to the watching world. I doubt if it will succeed. Most people already have a notion of what the UK is like and what it stands for. None of us thinks any the better of China and its human rights record because the Olympics opening and closing ceremonies there were sumptuous. Greece has not avoided trouble, or avoided acquiring a bad image because its opening ceremony in 2004 was elegant – see this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Summer_Olympics_opening_ceremony.
I feel ashamed of our national spending priorities. £81m on the ceremonies is very nearly the amount that the government was trying to save in benefits today; and frequently I read of expensive new cancer treatment drugs that we cannot afford. Everyone has their shopping list. To put Olympics spending ahead of housing and health is perverse. Bread and circuses.
Under the cost of the Lords.
It can be funded by getting rid of you. Assuming you don’t insist on redundancy pay for not having a job.
Then you would not have the Lords voting for fewer welfare cuts and defying the Commons, or making the government come up with alternative proposals. You would be entirely at the mercy of the majority in the Commons and whatever they wanted, without any modification.
PS It is not a paid job. Expenses hardly cover what I have to spend on staying in London, as I do not live there, but in the country.
Ask around your fellow Peers. Lots have been angling for a payoff when the Lords is decimated/chopped/abolished.
2,700 quid a day, per peer to be saved.
If its not a paid job explain why ‘redudancy’ is on the books.
The House of Lords has approved without a vote plans to allow peers to take “voluntary retirement” to reduce the size of the upper chamber.
There are currently 828 members of the House, of whom 22 are on leave of absence and 16 are disqualified as they are judges or MEPs.
Former Conservative MP Lord Hunt of Wirral, who drafted the proposals, said one peer who wanted to retire was Lord Northfield, a former Labour MP for 19 years before joining the Lords in 1975.
He has been on leave of absence for the past year.
As peers debated the plans on Monday, former Liberal Party leader Lord Steel of Aikwood led calls for retiring peers to be offered up to £30,000 tax-free to resign from the House.
Lord Steel had introduced a private member’s bill that proposes a range of reforms to the Lords to reduce the number of peers by introducing a retirement scheme.
1. Tax evasion put in place. Why shouldn’t peers be taxed for money received for NOT working?
2. If its not a job, why should there be any redundancy?
3. If you can’t live in London on the sums handed out, perhaps its time to axe you. There are lots of people living in London on far less, but they get forced to hand over thousands in tax so you can get your expenses.
LB: The average constituency size is up from 65,000 to 75,000. I presume you support moves for MPs to be paid 75,000 per annum as part of their annual ‘salary’.
One also assumes you have no problem with the Speaker running a knocking shop where MPs can make millions on top of their ‘salary’ when there is absolutely no need for them to take the salary.
Lets have MPs salaries reduced in proportion to their private earnings saving the taxpayer at least 25 million pounds per year, money that could better be used to improve research facilities within the house or even contribute to a Lords hardship fund. Yes, not all peers are flush you know excepting Blaggers of course.
No. I support giving the constituents the right to set the pay of their MPs.
As for the general troughing by MPs, look at the complaints about civil servants use of ltd companies.
Search the register of interest of MPs and vast numbers are taking money gross. All to avoid paying PAYE and NI.
500 pounds an hour plus in quite a few cases.
@senex:
Now there is an interesting statistic on the increase in population for MP’s constituents. How on earth did it go from 65,000 to 75,000 and over what period was this?
We are consistently advsed that the indigenous population of the country is not replacing itself with new births. Which means this increse has to be down to immigration. So, if the salaries of MP’s is going to increase with the population, no wonder they are backing a massive immigration increase to the peoples of this country via an open door border policy.
In the 1950’s the population for the UK was around the 50m mark. Now, sixty years later, it is around the 63m level. Plus those not registered at about 1 million. Under that auspices the immigrant population in this country has to be around the 22% mark. And rising rapidly.
Well now we can easily understand why our income levels have dropped so dramtically. As well as understand why government is anti majority.
The theory that is spread around like seeds on the wind, telling us that we must continue to increase the population to service the social needs of those already existing, is crazy mens thinking. It is totally unsustainable. There has to be a cut off point. And sooner rather than later would be the way to go.
Otherwise, the underlying overall plan has to be spread throughout parliament, as it is not spouted by just a single party, to replace the original population with other cultures as a must. In other words, ethnic cleansing. Especially if you take into account the now pressing notion of so called euthanasia of the sick and disabled at will.
Which, if it follows the abortion record, and there is no doubt at all that it will, the change to our society will be faster and more dramatic than it already is. Exactly what Blair, Straw and the rest of that crew in that party, planned some time ago.
It all pales beside the waste in government departments and “sickies” and welfare frauds. If the Lords is such a generous employer, why are you not on the red benches beside me? You clearly think you would be much better at it! Just fill in the form . . .
Because I’ve no intention of sitting their racking up 2,700 a day in costs to the tax payer.
I’ve no desire to rip other people off, drinking and scoffing subsidised food at poor people expense.
I quite agree with you, although I wouldn’t restrict my criticism to the opening and closing ceremonies.
Having said that, the Olympics is a one-off event, and the welfare savings are presumably annual (or per a certain period). Even cancelling the Olympics would only tackle national debt, but not the deficit.
The Games should be given permanently back to their originating country, Greece; beginning with say a trial 20 year period
with financial investment from all other participating nation-states and from the UN too;
even making it a biennial world-focusing event.
Also hold annual Preparatory Games in such Greece-centred infrastructure, to further secure the concentrated investment from other nations (but not from ‘private individuals’) and to boost both world-athletics and international economics,
Greece being thus ‘rescued’ from its depression,
whilst all other Nations also save hugely for their own internal needs and infrastructuring;
and the longterm Cost of the Games would actually be reducing, whilst its quality, extent, and coverage, and resulting good-effects on world-health and wellbeing would be improving.
We could even see creatively gentler-skilled new events, in the Cinderella fields of Somatics, Meditative-Dance, and Holistic Movement Patterning,
becoming daily-viewing year-round and world-wide, for ordinary lifeplace healthier-habits propagation.
————-
That the noble baroness feels “ashamed” might be significant in another respect too,
for according to Dr Edward de Bono*, when we have to make decisions, we should be completing our information-gathering, perceptions and thinking-processes first and foremost (which the baroness appears to be doing, and to have done in this British Welfare Matter, set at odds with the-spendthrift- Showing-Off and Fireworks-Displaying to the Wide World via the Olympics,of ‘Britain’s Glorious Reliability’.)
because our final decision-making is always done emotionally.
That our final-emotions are coming in as “fear”, “frustration”, “anger”, “disgust”, and “shame”, namely as ‘Negatives’, surely shows that ‘some-more-than-one, very-high-up Public Governors’
have not only been failing our Human Purposes and Needs, but have been and continue unabated handing us out wholesale spin-doctored ‘mushroom treatments’,
whilst themselves each drawing huge numbers of human-livings from the Common Purse.
The abilities of “one-human-being, one-human-living”, really do need to be included not only in The Olympics, but in the job-and-lifestyle parameters of All-Governance-Members and Public Servants (including the BBC, Hansard, and the Media at large).
—————————————-
I too feel ashamed, baroness, that the more the power and the higher the income of our ‘most intelligent’ “leaders”, the less willing they each become to be just one-complete-human-being, and the less able each becomes to live sustainworthily, affordably, healthily, citizenlike, and environment-supportively, off just one-complete human-living.
————–
* “Edward de Bono’s Thinking Course” chapters 8 & 9 on Emotions and Values, and Decision-Making.
Agre with you about permanent return to Greece. They could do with it.
Practically everyone I have spoken to about the opening ceremony is only interested in the fireworks.
Hardly anyone admits that they will sit through several hours of stupefying boredom of dances and whatevers before turning the telly on for the fireworks.
The Olympic ceremonies have become proverbial ego trips where countries vie to outdo each other for the best most amazing event – and most people will only really remember the fireworks.
The UK could have gone down in the history books as the country that stopped this “arms race” and got the event back down to scale – much to the relief of all the nations that will follow London 2012.
What a pity we missed that one.
I have always seen the Olympics simply another way for developers, et al, to scam the public purse. nothing new in that.
However, the impact on the poor with regard to selling off public housing, which is what they are doing, is devastating to those involved.
True story:
This is taking place right now, in Guildford, Surrey. Two ‘women’ one old and one young. The young one has two children and married, some time ago. The husband left for better things and took his son, from a previous marriage, with him, This lady lives in a four bedroom house, which means one bedroom is empty, the size of which can barely fit a tiny baby’s cot. She has been given notice by the council that her house is being sold off and that she will no longer have a home there. She naturally was upset but asked they rehouse her or put her on the waiting list during her remaining time there. They refused to do this, advising she can only go on their ‘list’ once she has first become homeless. And this means waiting for a court hearing, being given an eviction notice and then going, that day, with her two little children to the council offices in order to register with them again for housing. Then being taken into the homeless queue, whatever that involves. She says her life has ended, she doean’t know where to turn.
The second woman is an elederly widow, who has lived in her three bedroom council house for forty years, where she raised her children and her husbands memories are. She is in her late sixties. She has been told she has two bedrooms too many and that she has to either be rehoused in a studio flat for the elderly, or, pay for extra bedrooms at an exhorbitant rate. Which on her pension she cannot afford. She too has to go on the homeless register before this studio will be made available to her. It goes without saying, this woman is at her wits end with fear and cannot understand why, after leading an exemplary life, she is being thrown out of her home by this State in order to house others more acceptable to them. The money this woman has spent on her home, and the care she has taken of it in all her years there makes no difference, she is seen as expendable.
This is third world politics taking over our country. Civilised people are being abused. it is time to lobby for a land of our own akin to Israel, for those who cannot live in a non Christian country. As this is proof positive that England is no longer a Christian country.
And another little thought, is this practice of forced homelessness taking place in Scotland and Wales? Or, will both these women be classified as ‘deliberately’ homeless and therefore not being a duty of their local authority?
The state in these two cases are forcing these women into deliberate homelessness. Does the ‘human rights’ act cover this? And if it does, we now see why the Conservatives are so anxious to be rid of it and have us out of Europe.
The last little tickler here is, had these women still had their ‘men’ this drastic and disgusting situation would not have happened. That makes this a policy against women. Although of course the fob off will be no it isn’t, men are facing it as well.
And what do you want to bet if you go back to these ladies present homes, once they are destitute and the council has re-let them, the majoirty will be filled with ‘new comers.’
Lawyers should be taking these cases pro bono.
And don’t think this is not going to affect any of you. It will. There will be a distant relative, a dear freind, or, off spring, who will be forced into destitution. And you will have allowed this to happen.
I agree with you Baroness Deech. It’s nice to see someone with morals for once. It is a waste. It just shows other countries how extravagant and spiteful are country can be in times like these.
Practically everyone I have spoken to about the opening ceremony is only interested in the firework
You’ve gotta admit that the occasional pyrotechnic display can be fascinating. Quite a skill.
I like Sharon Morgan’s “morals”! Really!? Ha!Ha!
This whole Olympic scenario is a con. And the British public are being taken to the cleaners.
The tickets are now being sold at unbelievable rates. Who can afford that? And frankly, why would you want them even if you could afford it?. A bunch of clowns running fast opposite another stooge running even faster. And drugging themselves to the hilt for it. What a thrill that is. Pleeeese. And paying good money for it has to be mindless.
What really has to be scrutinised is, who is getting this public money for this old rope and who are they scamming on top of the tax payer? How much are they making and when they are caught out, how much are they going to have to pay back?
And the special alnes in the road. Very camp. Jesus, do you love the Russian style so intensely you feel we must have this creaking show as well? Next we will be having to lie on the floor and weep for the beloved leader or get beaten to death for not showing enough respect.
Not far from what we already have is it really?
This is exploitation of the simple minded at the cost of our welfare programmes. The welfare benefits are long term, this idiot show is temporary. Who should be paying back the public purse for this mess is those who are running it. Those who introduced it, and those creaming off the top.
Hands in pockets boys and lay it all out on the table so that we can bleach you.
Both the Olympics top-end ‘Well-Fed & Highly-Trained Most-Valuable Bodies of the World’
and the Poverty bottom-end ‘Deprived & Under-Trained Least-Valuable Bodies-Emotions-Minds-Spirits of the World’
need to be delivered from muddled-language, spin-doctoring, and fuddled-thinking;
before clear, clean and constructive progress can be made in both top-olympians and bottom-deprivedians, and in the in-between levels of the whole human race.
For instance, we need to be calling all basic-lifespportive-payments ‘Allowances’, not the spurious ‘Benefits’ misnomer (“”Free-Gifts””);
and we need to remove the spin-doctor-emeritus-cliques who persistently kid us that
“persecution of another People” is “ethnic-cleansing”
(for a start the victimised other-people are not being at all ‘cleansed’,
they are being filthily and obscenely
‘dirtied’).
—————-
Maude has identified a dearth of Religious human-support.
Indeed, historicly no Religion
(nor any ‘Education’, ‘Health’, ‘Social’, or ‘Individual-Human-Development’ Service)
has yet established itself as a Nurturer of the sevenfold-spiritual-energies Innate or ‘God-given’ [but not, as Christianity falsely claims ‘Essentially-Church-Provided’]
in each human-being.
————-
This whole Matter of Human-Values and Lifesupports-Conservation is especially apposite today following news that Our Commonwealth Monarch (Queen Elizabeth II) has publicly scolded both Would-Be Improvers and the British People at large, for failing to appreciate the traditional and essential Goodness of (Her) Church of England and the Anglican Church.
———-
To begin bringing every-one’s mind-and-heart, high and low, soberly face-to-face with our Human Race’s now increasingly desperate need for a sustainworthy life-equation, I can do no other than to strongly suggest as the recurring starting-point focus:
“One-human-being needs (only) One human-living”.
——
I don’t see how else we are ever going to become sufficiently sustainworthy for both survival and longest-possible-term thrival.
Perhaps the most telling comment on contemporary values is that ambulances will not be allowed to use the VIP lanes during the Games.
For the Olympic Committee (and by extension, Government and Parliament), the convenience of celebrities ranks higher than the lives of citizens.
Innocent Abroad: not quite true. Ambulances with flashing blue lights will continue to use the best lane possible for the fastest, and safest, journey.
Your comment on the “Olympic Committee” is puzzling. The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games is a registered company. Parliament did enact the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006 – is this what you meant ‘by extension’?
Para (1) – glad to hear it. Can’t remember where I heard the idea that sparked my original comment.
Para (2) – yes.
You sound as if you are well informed – it has to be realised how much resentment has been built up amongst Londoners and road users by the VIP lanes. If London can’t cope with the traffic in the normal way, it should not have bid for the Games. The special lanes, added to the reserved tickets for VIPs, are a blot on the democratic ideal of the Games.
Yep. And a few strategically place diversions, and its all grid lock.
Baroness Deech: Surely you must agree that traffic at least moves in London, unlike the fifth state of matter occupying roads in Oxford, the birthplace of VIP bus lanes and VIP cycle lanes on pedestrian footpaths.
Your gripe seems to be with the people who will benefit from reserved lanes for a few weeks. Bus lanes are permanent.
This press release feels the VIP lanes will not be able to be used, as the ‘secret’ ‘Rothschild Olympics Organization’ has banned amblulances from doing so. Even when carrying dialysis patients. Who are these people? And who gave them the clout to ban anything to do with this people and its democratic rule?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/feb/18/olympic-seize-roads-patients-suffer
‘Rothschild Olympics’ who knew? Now we know why Osborne and chum, Mandy, are so thick in. Would back handers be in the form of special deals for speaking or only when mortgages are required? These people are of the same ilk as the Blair and Brown mules, desperately trying to fit into horses harness, once time on the front bench is up?
The Corporations are in bed with our government. Or, more appropriately, we are constantly being made aware that our Government is in bed with the Corporate machine. Hence their love affair with the banking industry after it bleached us all.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rothschild-loses-libel-case-and-reveals-secret-world-of-money-and-politics-6720015.html
LadyTizzy – you are so right about Oxford. Traffic management is a catastrophe. Cyclists break all the rules. We know that the gridlock was created deliberately by the council in pursuit of some sort of ideology. Most problems could be solved by removing the traffic lights at the station bridge.
LB: “If its not a paid job explain why ‘redudancy’ is on the books.” Indeed!
It is a job nonetheless. As the ‘Committee on Members’ Expenses’ state:
“We note that for tax and other purposes MPs are classified as office-holders, by virtue of holding a “position which has an existence independent of the person who holds it and may be filled by successive holders”. Here is evidence that they do not hold an employment as now defined under Common Law.
The ‘History of Payments’ section para 16 gives a time line of why MPs were not officially paid until 1911 whilst para 18 quotes Lloyd George on what the 400 pounds is all about.
In 1911 the HoL debates the Parliament Bill, Hansard (col 358) records Lord Ellenborough’s view on the merits of the 400 pounds.
In 1913 the HoL debates the National Insurance (1911) Amendment Bill, the only money bill the house is allowed to scrutinise. Viscount Midleton says:
“I think it was under the present Chancellor of the Exchequer that the House of Commons voted to its own Members £400 a year without legislative enactment. That, my Lords, was an outrage on precedent.”
So what forces Lloyd George to commit this outrage? The Law Lords no less and the Osborne Judgement of 1909. The outrage on precedent is a question of whether the Commons by its vote used the Royal Prerogative to obtain money contrary to the Bill of Rights 1689 as a pretence of prerogative?
The view must be that a pretence of prerogative was set in place because the Commons did not means test MP incomes before they received the 400 pounds. Sadly, the HoL and the Law Lords are no longer in a position to do anything about this. Are you?
Ref: The Operation of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009
Committee on Members’ Expenses: Part 2. Background
4. History of Payments to MPs.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmmemex/1484/148404.htm
Parliament Bill
HL Deb 06 July 1911 vol 9 cc283-386: Column 358
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1911/jul/06/parliament-bill
National Insurance Act (1911) Amendment Bill:
HL Deb 12 August 1913 vol 14 cc1861-96: Column 1871
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1913/aug/12/national-insurance-act-1911-amendment
The Osborne Judgment 1909: trade union funding of political parties in historical perspective: James G. Moher; Outcomes
http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-96.html
Yes indeed, Baroness Deech. But think what music this is to the ears of Alex Salmond, especially when coupled with the major celebrations (in London, of course) to mark the Queen’s jubilee. All it might take to seal SNP fortunes is a nicely timed and extremely expensive State Funeral for the Noble Baroness Thatcher, and the alienation of not only the average Scot will be complete.
Ha! Ha!
Innocent Abroad! That’s a good one! I had to attend a Hansard society meeting to work out who all these pseuds are, only to discover one Italian writing here, I have been acquainted with for nearly 50 years.
Innocent abroad? Now you’ve got me thinking!
@TwmO:
And now, with this post, you have me thinking.
You suggest you were/are able to access the Hansard files on all posters on this blog to obtain their identity, and one can also assume, location. As both would remain together.
If, as you write, you believe we all have pseud’s in order to remain anonymous, why would you do this, and why would you be given the nod to do it? What and who gives ‘you’ the ability to ignore the wishes of these bloggers in order to satisfy your curiosity? Had the pseud’s wanted you, or anyone else, to know their whereabouts, etc., they would have not have needed to use subterfuge would they?
If this is what you did, then Hansard should respond to this matter and put up on here the facts about this infringment of privacy you have managed with their consent. But without the posters permission.
Who else has access to this information? Every one of us should have been advised on this matter prior to posting. Transparency and openess, after all, is the mantra here. Isn’t it? And while we are at it, why were we not asked if this was acceptable to us?
What an outrage.
@Maude
I can’t see any way that a commenter on LOTB – Twm O’r Nant or anyone else – could see anything other than the username that is publicly available on the site. I’m also not sure how you would come to this conclusion from the post this responds to…have I missed something?!
@Beccy:
Who knows what we all are missing here? I am simply questioning the implication of Twm O’r Nant’s caution as written.
The line says, quite openly, Ha! Ha! Innocent Abroad! I interpret this as the chosen pseud being laughable in the circumstances as the owner of same pseud is far from an innocent.
Twm goes on the explain how he knows that is because he has found out who he is by attending a ‘Hansard’ society meeting to work out, or find out, who all the rest of these ‘pseuds’ (bloggers) here are, only to discover he has known for fifty years one poster who is Italian.
What other interpretation could one make of this line other than my above suspicions that he delved into the files ‘Hansard’ maintains.
Make of it what you will.
We hold lots of public meetings about political issues that are usually panel discussions or Q and A sessions – I imagine this is the kind of meeting he’s referring to. I really can’t tell you what else he means in that post as it’s fairly unclear in my reading of it. Perhaps that he found out by talking to someone else attending the event that they also comment on the blog? Stranger things have probably happened…
Whatever he meant by his comment there are no cicrcumstance in which we’d share any information that is private. If you want to see the privacy info you can view it here http://lordsoftheblog.net/terms-and-conditions/
Hope this clears things up!