MP's Expenses - Learning from Dave
source: http://jamescousins.com/2009/05/mps-expenses-what-can-dave-teach-us/
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Surprisingly one of the more interesting pieces I've read on the MPs expenses scandal (and next it will be the Liberal Democrats turn to suffer) is on the web site of a Conservative Councillor from Wandsworth, James Cousins.
He is at least as surprised to be yearning for Dave Nellist, a left-wing Miltant tendency Labour MP who was deselected by the Labour party in 1992 for his socialist views. While Nellist was an MP, he refused to draw his full salary, taking only the average wage of a worker in his Coventry constituency so that he "kept in touch with their concerns and problems. The very fact he limited his income gave him some idea of how they had to live their lives."
The rest of the piece is worth reading, though perhaps Cousins avoids what might be the conclusion of this way of thinking, that the problem we have with politics and our MPs is that it is now a career rather than a conviction.
He is at least as surprised to be yearning for Dave Nellist, a left-wing Miltant tendency Labour MP who was deselected by the Labour party in 1992 for his socialist views. While Nellist was an MP, he refused to draw his full salary, taking only the average wage of a worker in his Coventry constituency so that he "kept in touch with their concerns and problems. The very fact he limited his income gave him some idea of how they had to live their lives."
The rest of the piece is worth reading, though perhaps Cousins avoids what might be the conclusion of this way of thinking, that the problem we have with politics and our MPs is that it is now a career rather than a conviction.
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