Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.
MPs' Expenses while councillors fiddle
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MPs' Expenses while councillors fiddle
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While we're all having fun over MPs' expenses (by the way, sack the lot I say, and don't replace them - turn the building into a nice hotel and destroy the state apparatus as much as possible) space a thought for poor old Oxfordshire County Councillor Olive Steadman.
While these MPs get away with excuses like "it was a paperwok error" and so on, and whilst it's not that we actually believe them when they say it but there doesn't actually seem to be terribly much movement on taking criminal action, Ms Steadman, a truly batty seventy-something lady whom anyone in the world who knows her would believe that she makes regular paperwork errors, was immediately suspended from the Labour party, dragged through the courts, convicted and fined for having claimed some pension enhancement while she was receiving councillorrs' allowances.
Her excuse, too, was that she had not understood the entitlement and the forms (to be fair not a terribly rare ocurrance with the 347 page forms they make people fill in I imagine) and had since paid it all back or made arrangements to do so.
But no mercy was shown. She had the whole book of forms thrown at her. The same needs to be done where possible to the Westmonster troughers, every one of them! We need them even less than the county councillors I suggest. Less perhaps even than a hole in the head.
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I am a far-right social libertarian
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BUT - See my objections to this here.
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Comments
Frankly, let's start paying local councillors for their public service, and thereby also ensure that they are not- like their Westminster counterparts- abusing the system. I know many local councillors who are active in local politics (they work hard!), putting many hours into local affairs and who are supposedly working full-time in Third Sector organisations, creating not only conflicts of interests between their different roles but also forcing the Third Sector to subsidize their public/political roles: one well-known example is Labour Councillor Antonia Bance working with Oxfam's UK poverty programme. The whole system needs over-hauling!