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willing1

Listed below are comments made by willing1 between Monday, 4th August 2008 and Saturday, 23rd May 2009.

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What do you think of events in the Commons today? 07:46am on 23 May 2009 So Dr Rowan Williams believes all's been revealed in respect of MPs' expenses, and that we should stop laying into our MPs.

How shall I put this? Ah yes, RUBBISH!

This is clearly the tip of the proverbial ice berg. We, the hapless public (who these MPs are allegedly duty-bound to serve) have only become aware of the rip-off revelations at parliament because of the courage of a whistle-blower, and the success of Freedom of Information campaigner, Heather Brooke. at the high court last year.

There is undoubtedly lots more to uncover, especially if a proper investigation by independent auditors, is carried out covering the last ten years.

As to the reaction by party leaders to the shabby and greedy behaviour of growing numbers of their colleagues, I want to know why the known offenders are still being allowed to decide their own futures, when and if they will choose to stand down, etc. Why are they not being thrown out of parliament? Why are they not being prosecuted? And please don't talk about rules...in actual fact, very few of the claims we have learned of could be described as staying within the spirit or the letter of the spurious rules.
What do you think of events in the Commons today? 6:27pm on 18 May 2009 Even if one ignores Michael Martin's recent, and not so recent, behaviour, I would like to know why he, Gordon Brown, Alistaire Darling, and countless other Scottish ministers and MPs, are at Westminster in the first place?

A few years ago the British taxpayer was compelled to build the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, and at a cost of £400 million (ten times the original estimate!). It is now little more than the plush office space for the Scottish Nationalists, who stepped gleefully into the vacuum left by all the greedy and ambitious mainstream Scottish MPs fleeing south.

Even more difficult to comprehend than the as yet unanswered and unresolved 'West Lothian Question', is the fact that the smallest country in the Union has two bites of the political cherry.

When the crooked MPs have been sorted out, let's sort out the crooked political system.
What do you think of events in the Commons today? 6:11pm on 18 May 2009 continuing the dishonourable behaviour which led Michael Martin to join the feeding freanzy, in claiming for a second home in London for which he had no need, he fails to salvage a small scrap of dignity by accepting his deserved fate.

He has had his nose in the trough as deeply as most of the greedy colleagues he has tried to protect.

It is better to have a parliament without a speaker, than for it to have a speaker without honour.
Crime: the numbers game 11:15pm on 04 Aug 2008 It seems to me there are essentially two aspects to youth crime, each of which needs to be addressed, and funded, seperately.

First, there is prevention by early intervention at family and school level. It should be at this level that not only so-called rights of the individual are alluded to, but more importantly, responsibilities, so that it is fully understood that rights are not like free sweets...they must be earned.

Secondly, at the criminal justice level, the great and ongoing debates around incarceration, asbo's, commnity orders, etc seems to ignore the obvious. Whilst those on the soft left such as Harriet Harmen enjoy speaking of human rights, and pressure groups insist "prison doesn't work", and those purporting to represent the majority of us who choose not to break the law, bend and sway with the latest protestations of yet another human rights lawyer or activist, the growing menace of youth violence has infiltrated and stained more of our communities.

We need laws which reflect old fashioned common sense, and the views and concerns of the wider law-abiding citizen. Might I suggest a zero tolerance policy, such as that proposed by Ray Mallon not too long ago? Accompanied perhaps by meaningful prison sentences for both violent and repeat offenders...which would also lead to large drops in the population of overcowded prisons, as sentences would once again become the very real deterrents they once were?

Regards.

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