Latest MP Scandal

[DraytonBoy]

As yet another politician gets caught with his pants down (literally) I'm beginning to think that to be involved in politics you need to have some genetic defect. So many are exposed as liars, cheats, thieves or deviants that there has to be a medical reason why these muppets think they can behave like this and still hold the trust and respect of those they serve.

[Quillan]

[quote user="DraytonBoy"]As yet another politician gets caught with his pants down (literally) I'm beginning to think that to be involved in politics you need to have some genetic defect. So many are exposed as liars, cheats, thieves or deviants that there has to be a medical reason why these muppets think they can behave like this and still hold the trust and respect of those they serve.[/quote]

No it's just called being an idiot.

Your and MP and somebody asks you to send them a naked picture of yourself, yeah right you do it straight away. What’s frightening is that this is the one we know about, how many others are there. To think we are supposed to respect politicians, I don't think so. I have always maintained that all prospective MP's should be forced to take a basic intelligence test before they take their seat (I often think the same about those members of the public that are allowed to vote as well). That would get rid of at least half of them.

[mint]

But, DB and Q, MPs are supposed to be representative of us, the general population[;-)]

So hands up all those with predilections for let's say unsavoury practices and Q will make sure you leave the Forum!

[woolybanana]

Come on Norman, first in queue!

[NormanH]

You leave my queue out of it  thank you very much or you will find that my bark is  as bad as my bite [6]

[idun]

[:D]

[woolybanana]

Just checking you are still with us, Norman.

[PaulT]

Mint (still cannot get used to it) wrote:

But, DB and Q, MPs are supposed to be representative of us, the general population

It might be true for you Mint but unfortunately, I am not a multi millionaire.

[Clark Kent II]

Serious comment: One MP gets caught in what looks suspiciously like a sting, so all MPs are castigated.

PaulT implies that all MPs are rich. Are they? Certainly not on their MPs salaries. What part of Lincolnshire are you from Paul? If it's Boston, are you looking forward to a UKIP MP?

 

Not quite so serious comment: Francois Holland  doesn't seem to know what trousers are!

Why are we all so po-faced about sex? There is, I'm told, an old Irish proverb:

When God invented sex he intended it to be a joke. Nobody laughed, so he made it a sin. I wonder what they laugh about in Arundel and Brighton?

 

 

[mint]

[quote user="NormanH"]You leave my queue out of it  thank you very much or you will find that my bark is  as bad as my bite [6]

[/quote]

And I thought that it's when you don't know your cul from your coude that you are in some difficulty?

[idun]

No mint, it is when I am saying cul or cou, that I don't appear to know one from the other.[:$]

MP's, if the average salary is around £25k then theirs at £64k plus those expenses and I would say that they are rather well off.

mint I have pm'd you.

[mint]

Merci, id.  Je t'ai répondu.

[DraytonBoy]

Clark, if you tot up how many MP's have been caught lying (think speeding fines), cheating (on partners etc), stealing (expenses etc) and committing various sexual acts then it runs into dozens.

[woolybanana]

Just about the average for the rest of the population, then.

[PaulT]

CKII I do not live in the Boston area - can't speak Polish :)

It was a little tongue in cheek about MPs but there are a lot who are multi millionaires, especially in the Cabinet.

Certainly, for a conscientious MP we pay is abysmal perhaps for those who spend most of their time sitting on the Board of various companies it is a nice bit of bunce for something you do not have to turn up for.

Was it not during Maggies time that MPs were told it was not a good time for a pay rise so they should top up their money via expenses.

My MP decided to abstain from voting on Friday which I find shameful.

[Clark Kent II]

Paul

I have just about 30 minutes composing a rational, reasoned response to your last posting and then - in a moment of inattention - sent it straight down a black hole into oblivion. I can't summon the energy to recreate it.

I don't think that the problem with MPs is that they are rich and sit as directors on boards, but that they go from university into party organisations and then into Parliament without seeing anything of the world outside. They (or many of them) are devoid of real world experience.

[mint]

CK, you are right about career MPs, no real experience of life and would be unemployable if they weren't MPs.

I have also been around teachers a bit and they, too, with leaving school, going to university and then getting a job as a teacher and so back to the classroom tend, in my eyes, to behave rather like children on occasion.

Now I expect some teachers out there to give me an ear-bashing but that was one reason I did not want to stay in teaching.

Just brought in the teacher thing to give a parallel with MPs.  Some of my best friends are teachers................[:)]

[Jonzjob]

[quote user="mint"]CK, you are right about career MPs, no real experience of life and would be unemployable if they weren't MPs.

I have also been around teachers a bit and they, too, with leaving school, going to university and then getting a job as a teacher and so back to the classroom tend, in my eyes, to behave rather like children on occasion.

Now I expect some teachers out there to give me an ear-bashing but that was one reason I did not want to stay in teaching.

Just brought in the teacher thing to give a parallel with MPs.  Some of my best friends are teachers................[:)]

[/quote]

Teachers? 20 or so hour week with very long holidaze? What more could wish for than starting life in junor school, progressing to senior school, then coledge, then on to university then back to school. A real good look at how the world works so that they can teach children how to react to the real world  [:-))][kiss] Now John duques to avoid the flaque [6]

As far as politiques are concerned I was always under the impression that you could tell when a politition was telling porkies because his mouth was opening and closing and a noise was issuing forth [;-)] And as far as Brussels is concerned the norm is to find new ways of fiddling the expenses??? Just a rumour you understand?

[idun]

I have started to wonder exactly what sort of person goes into politics, and what sort of person is ambitious in any job.

I suppose I used to admire ambition, but now I have grave doubts about it. I suppose I used to think that politicians went into it to improve the lives of their fellow 'man'.

Now I believe in the stockholm syndrome. Once these people reach any sort of power, then too many, (I'll not say all, as I hope it is not 'all',) start to live in the alternative universe with those who also are in power, this little universe being suspended above the rest of us as they look down upon us all with complete indifference as they lose their facility to be in touch with reality. Their judgment constantly flawed.

Why do they get up to things, because they are gonflé, their inflated sense of being must in some way prevent them from believing that good morals or the law of the land apply to them.

EG: In the UK the government states that one only needs £72.40 to live on per week. Where does reality start when those in charge are so clueless and inhumane, whilst they wallow in their spoils. I have a few choice words for them, but just imagine them.

[Thibault]

It is interesting this thread has concentrated on politicians (and, for some reason, teachers) but what about the newspaper which put one of its journalists to impersonate a member of a political party and chat him up? It seems this journalist approached several Conservative MPs and this one was silly enough to bite.

But what about the ethics of the process? What about the self-regulation of the press?

Isn't it the job of newspapers to report news, not create it by running sting operations?

[idun]

But MP's know that journalists get up to this sort of dirty trick. I believe that politicans think that they are so clever and impress others so much that their deluded egos lead them up the garden path.

No one should be sending out intimate photos of themselves, especially not to a stranger.

The sad thing is that the photo of the young lady involved did not know about it, or so I have read, and that really is disgusting. I don't feel sorry for the MP.

[Thibault]

Well MPs are hardly alone in thinking they are clever or have deluded egos. I don't feel particularly sorry for this MP either. However, I do have concerns that a newspaper should carry out such a sting operation so that the results can be published on the day that a particular political party conference is starting. It is interesting that only MPs from one particular political party were targeted. Do we think that the newspaper concerned thinks that only the male MPs from that party would be up for it?

I would feel the same if the 'victim' had been from any other walk of life.

[Hoddy]

What astonishes me is that so many of these middle-aged men seem to fall for this or similar tricks. Are their brains in their bits ? Do they actually know any twenty somethings who fancy them ?

Before anyone tells me I'm anti-men - I am/have been a daughter, a sister of four brothers, a wife, a partner and a mother of a son and I just don't believe that any of these lovely men would have fallen for this.

That said it is hardly journalism is it ?

[mint]

[quote user="Thibault"]It is interesting this thread has concentrated on politicians (and, for some reason, teachers) but what about the newspaper which put one of its journalists to impersonate a member of a political party and chat him up? It seems this journalist approached several Conservative MPs and this one was silly enough to bite.

But what about the ethics of the process? What about the self-regulation of the press?

Isn't it the job of newspapers to report news, not create it by running sting operations?[/quote]

I agree totally.  This is not "journalism" which actually still has a fine tradition in the UK.

Self-regulation is a nonsense.  Clearly the MP in question did NOT regulate himself, did he?  OTOH, we don't really want to go down the route of government regulation of the press[:-))]

But I so think, as you do, that newspapers should be reporting the news and not creating it.

Having said that, without some undercover work, would we have found out about MPs' expenses?

It's a fine line between investigative journalism and, in this case, the shameful and unethical use of pictures of young women for entrapment without their knowledge or consent.

I don't know how or who should be allowed to draw the line?

NOT 

[Thibault]

I see a vast difference between uncovering the expenses stuff , which had been going on for years and needed dealing with and a newspaper deliberately going out of its way to create a situation which it can then plaster all over the paper with a 'shock, horror' attitude.

Wasn't there an issue recently over a court case and the undercover 'shiekh' who acted as an agent provacateur? This case would seem the same type of thing.

I have just listened to a barrister on PM discussing the possibility of the Sunday Mirror and its journalist being prosecuted - I hope they are. It might prevent this sort of thing happening again to anyone - celebrity, MP, vicar or whoever the paper feels it needs to take down a peg or two.