No, Prime Minister
Some MPs just don't get it, do they?
The latest honourable member to lose his 'moral compass' is none other than the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.
The PM lost his cool in front of a panel of first time voters yesterday - and tried to portray himself as some kind of innocent victim in the MPs' expenses scandal.
Gordon Brown tried to defend spending thousands of pounds in on cleaning bills, saying that his “only crime” was wanting to pay a decent wage.
“I’ve got to stay in two places at once, right? I’ve got my wife and I’ve got my children. I wasn’t claiming for a mortgage, I was paying for the expenses of having a house in London,” he told his audience.
Adding in a apparent reference to Sir Thomas Legg, the former Whitehall mandarin who investigated MPs’ claims at Mr Brown’s request and who ordered him to pay back more than £12,000, he added: “What the guy basically said was I shouldn’t be paying the cleaner a minimum wage.
No, Prime Minister - that is complete nonsense - and you should know better.
The issue was never about whether a cleaner was paid six pounds an hour or eight pounds an hour.
The issue is why should the taxpayer subsidise an MP who wants someone else to do his cleaning or his laundry - and why didn't MPs pay for these personal services out of their own money - like everyone else?
Some MPs may require to operate two homes - one in their constituency and one in Westminster -but you can obviously only live in one at a time.
And, of course, whilst you would expect MPs to pay their employees a decent wage - not the minimum wage - that is a completely separate and different matter altogether.
The latest honourable member to lose his 'moral compass' is none other than the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.
The PM lost his cool in front of a panel of first time voters yesterday - and tried to portray himself as some kind of innocent victim in the MPs' expenses scandal.
Gordon Brown tried to defend spending thousands of pounds in on cleaning bills, saying that his “only crime” was wanting to pay a decent wage.
“I’ve got to stay in two places at once, right? I’ve got my wife and I’ve got my children. I wasn’t claiming for a mortgage, I was paying for the expenses of having a house in London,” he told his audience.
Adding in a apparent reference to Sir Thomas Legg, the former Whitehall mandarin who investigated MPs’ claims at Mr Brown’s request and who ordered him to pay back more than £12,000, he added: “What the guy basically said was I shouldn’t be paying the cleaner a minimum wage.
No, Prime Minister - that is complete nonsense - and you should know better.
The issue was never about whether a cleaner was paid six pounds an hour or eight pounds an hour.
The issue is why should the taxpayer subsidise an MP who wants someone else to do his cleaning or his laundry - and why didn't MPs pay for these personal services out of their own money - like everyone else?
Some MPs may require to operate two homes - one in their constituency and one in Westminster -but you can obviously only live in one at a time.
And, of course, whilst you would expect MPs to pay their employees a decent wage - not the minimum wage - that is a completely separate and different matter altogether.
