Another historian in trouble?

With the current expenses scandal I noticed the civil servant in charge of the House of Commons department that administers MPs expenses Andrew Walker, is not as one would expect someone with qualifications in accountancy in fact his degree was in ancient eastern studies.

Why an individual with a qualification in history is paid £125,000 per year to be in charge of doling out £77,400,000 per year in expenses to our MPs is a little unclear.

I really do feel that we need a serious review of the suitability and qualifications of civil servants earning over £50,000 per year for the jobs they are doing, both locally and nationally.

MPs income the great gravy train, Turner and other Sunday ramblings

The average MP costs us about £4,000 per week, this figure is based on the current annual salary for an MP is £64,766 and an average £120,000 per annum in expenses, with 645 MPs this a tidy sum.

I also gather they can claim for items costing up to £250 without having to show a receipt.

I would say that the average man in the street struggling to survive the recession is none too pleased about this state of affairs but frankly it’s only the tip of the iceberg when compared to civil servants pay and expenses.

I was chatting to a KCC IT officer yesterday who evidently found yesterdays post rather amusing, something he said that I found interesting is that there is an attitude within KCC of Turner Contemporary at any price. He said there seems to be no limit to the funds available for this project and that a lot of KCC officers that have to keep within budgets were getting heartily sick of the project.

This is a simple case of government spending our money inappropriately, the whole system is upside down and the state of Margate is a reflection of poor governance at local and national levels.

The problem with Turner Contemporary is that government says a pretty much bottomless pot of money is available to regenerate Margate provided that this money is spent on the arts.

Of course the money should have been spent on revitalising Dreamland to a state of the art modern theme park and a new indoor swimming pool near to the beach, but once again back to the way government money is spent, grants are only available for a historic amusement site and much of the prime leisure site in the town will be lost to residential development.

It’s a similar problem with Ramsgate and the Pleasurama site once a seaside town loses its main leisure sites to mostly residential development and associated car parking there is no going back.

The resource that we have to offer that other towns haven’t is our natural coastline and the only way that we can compete with other seaside towns is by having better leisure facilities very close to our main leisure beaches, it’s not rocket science.

We have the meeting at the airport to receive the report on night flying in a couple of days, the problem with the airport is that it has bumbled along for years with different operators trying to be competitive by operating far less stringent environmental controls than would be acceptable elsewhere and this looks like a move to continue down the same path.

I have given up with trying to get TDC to publish the Ramsgate parish council elections list of candidates on a HTML website with proper tags for search engines and have done it myself see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/blogpicts2/id104.htm do feel free to link to it. If TDC ever get round to doing a proper job of publishing it I wonder if they will copy my source code.

I am off to by a TV some furniture and food to eat on my business expenses so I imagine that the Inland Revenue will prosecute me and I may be out of circulation for a while.

Thanet District Councillor’s Expenses

Click here to view

allowances and expenses

I have had a fairly thorough look at the councils expenses system and it would appear in most respects to be reasonable and fair certainly, those expenses that councillors can claim seem to be modest enough.

There is one aspect I have found that I don’t understand and would appreciate it if anyone could come up with a plausible explanation, with the maximum pay of any council officer being around £115,000 how can the combined pay and expenses for one officer be over £170,000 as this would mean expenses of over £55,000.

Does this mean that there are different expense rules for council officers than those for councillors, I certainly can’t find officers expenses anywhere on the councils website.

MPs Expenses and What Should Come Next

It is clearly evident that government has been pouring our money away in a totally unacceptable way and that a major review of how government at all levels spends our money on the people involved in government is needed.

I think it important to maintain credibility at a local level that Kent county councillors, Thanet district councillors and parish councillors should publish their expenses and that the council’s websites should set up areas where this will be done.

Next there is the matter of civil servants, looking at various government accounts it would appear that extra notice is taken of those whose total remuneration exceeds £50,000 per annum.

I believe that breakdowns of their pay and expenses should also be published, the sums here can be fairly large and certainly on Thanet District Council’s website they are displayed in a way that appears rather vague for such large sums of money.

Looking at their accounts for 2006/07 it says that one employee received combined pay and expenses of between £170,000 and £180,000 there is no more detail than that.

This is more money than the amount that Mr MacKay, the MP for Bracknell in Berkshire has just resigned over claiming.

I also believe that where civil servants receive more than £50,000 per year their qualifications should be published and where those qualifications don’t justify their income steps should be taken to reduce it.