Can someone please tell me why our Members of Parliament broke up some 12 days before Easter and at least 3 days before most Schools? The Country is in crisis with a possible fuel strike looming and yet these highly paid individuals only seem to be interested in taking as much out of the system as they can, whilst at the same time seeking to penalise hard working people.
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I don't think MPs are generally lazy, although they may be ineffective.
The party whip system renders the Legislature impotent against the Executive for the few bits of legislation they do theoretically have the power to affect.
The only use they (sometimes) have nowadays is as an upmarket Citizens Advice Bureau, if you are lucky enough to find a decent constituency MP, in that they can sometimes cut a few corners and pull a few strings.
Nobody can justify the cheap bars and restaurants - it is used to impress sponsers, those who can further their careers and to keep the party faithfull happy - and we pay for it. If by chance they actually spend any of their own money they claim it back on expenses.
If they had to pay the same prices as the rest of us they might stop taxing the pint as much as they do and help protect our heritage (the pub).
Open up the bars and restaurants to paying customers and the tourists will flock in.
They like a drink
The job has a lot of stress attached & they need to 'unwind'
MP's are better than us
Why not feather there own nests?
That's not strictly the case given Private Members Bills and also taking into account in a coalition government the Conservative Whip isn't in complete control of insuring a majority vote in Parliament.
As for MPs breaks well it all depends on the MP & their constituency. You'll find that in a seat where an MP has a small majority they will probably spend their holidays back in their constituency insuring they are making appearances in the community and ensuring they're doing all they can to give them the best possible chance should an election suddenly spring up. In a safe seat like mine (Old Bexley & Sidcup) you'll probably be lucky if you saw them at all. I've not seen James Brokenshire since 2010, not that I'm saying him or the Conservative party are the only ones that do this, lazy MPs is a cross-party problem.
As for the actual decisions makers, our ministers and great leaders, well chance are you definitely won't being seeing them in your constituency over the holidays as most of them will stay in London continuing their duties within their departments and making occasional TV and press appearances.
It's amazing what you pick up doing a politics degree isn't it. Shame it's all useless considering I wouldn't want to be one of them if you put a gun to my head.
The Local Government Association admits to 50% and the Welsh equivalent 70%.
http://new.lga.gov.uk/lga/core/page.do?pageId=14519
http://www.wlga.gov.uk/english/wlga-europe/
Open Europe also quotes 72% of the cost of regulation is EU derived. Quite relevant I'd have thought when Joe Public is being asked to practise austerity. They also estimate that about 50% of UK legislation comes from the EU
http://openeuropeblog.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/how-many-of-our-laws-are-made-in.html
Politicians will play with figures for sure but I hope I've demonstrated that Brussels has far more influence over our lives, and thus arguably the need for non-influential MPs, than the 3 main parties will admit, even down to Cameron's latest pasty cock-up.
The reality of that is his impotence over the EU tax VAT and reluctance to bring that impotence out into the open.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/hold-front-page.html
Good luck with your degree Jolly Robin.
We have to hope that they are out and about informing themselves about useful stuff, including the business of any committees they serve on.
Anyway if the Commons is in session it's just passing more laws and we probably have too many of those already
If you want to know what an honest MP thinks about all this, read the 3 volumes of Chris Mullins's diaries.
Just to add to this - EU regulations have to be enacted by Parliament after they have gone through the EU legislation process, but before that all prospective EU legislation is first sent to the parliaments of Member States for their comment/approval before the EU votes on it. So at that point we get some influence over legislation before it ever becomes law. In any case as we have MEPs in the European parliament and representatives in the Council and Commission and therefore we as Member States in the EU have a considerable amount of influence on legislation as its being enacted.
It's called posting at 1 in the morning after a few drinks!
I know the post time says 12:30 but I subsequently added to it.
One's grammar is not what it should be. latest cock-up re pasties would have been better.
The shop in Leeds where Man of The People Dave supposedly ate his pasty shut in 2007!
You would've thought that one of his cronies would've checked out the website to see if there was one there first before telling him to say it. Unless of course he really did buy it in 2007. I bet that time flies when you're PM!