Thoughts on politics and life from a liberal perspective

Wednesday 24 June 2009

Should David Tredinnick MP be spending our money on nonsense?

I have really been trying not to post about MPs expenses any more but I could not let this one pass by.


Apparently Conservative MP David Tredinnick has spent £510 of taxpayer's money on "Astrology software" and training on how to use it. I am afraid this is where my liberal self clashes with my extreme dislike of nonsense.

Astrology is to me self evidently nonsensical. If Mr Tredinnick wants to spend more than £500 of his own money and waste his time on this sort of thing then that is up to him but I resent having public money spent on software to teach an MP about utter bilge like this.

This money should be repaid by Mr Tredinnick immediately.


4 comments:

Kalvis Jansons said...

I agree completely!

Joe Otten said...

Cash for questions and now this.

If only he had thought ahead, spent his cash for questions fee on the astrology software, and asked the stars instead of the government...

Voter said...

I agree that the money should be repaid. We need to go further in reforms relating to money. Can we really expect MPs to be objective if they are receiving money?

Jim Hood MP gets 5000 pounds a year from Scottish Coal - according to a report on the BBC NEWS channel.

The temptation will be to push the interests of that body.

Voter said...

This is where a proportional system might be an advantage.

Suppose a small party (say with 1 or 2% support) made a big deal about expenses and got greater support from the public as a result.

A proportional system would reward them with seats and this would take seats away from bigger parties.

This might encourage more progressive thinking from the three main parties.