Taxi! For Mr & Mrs Speaker...........by indypal 2
Does it really matter if Mr Speaker is claiming expenses for a house with no mortgage? Or that Mrs Speaker seems to spend every living minute whizzing around London in a taxi all paid for by the taxpayer? It seems trivial but it should matter to all of us. Not to be too unfair on Mrs Speaker If I was stuck indoors with Mr Speaker I too would be tempted to spend all day in a London taxi.
The Speaker of the House of Commons is a prestigious job, the upholder of fair play and the rules of Parliament. Some have said that the current Mr Speaker isn't posh enough or bright enough to do the job. These people I have no time for. However you would think that Mr Speaker knowing there is a section of MPs who are out to get him would ensure that he is squeaky clean. Instead he has been helping himself to just about every allowance going. No one has said that he has done anything illegal but he certainly has been taking as much money as he could get. This is really all about greed I'm afraid.
He earns a fantastic salary, more than enough to fly his family to London or pay for their taxis but instead he would rather dip our pockets. I remember when David McCletchie was also caught using taxis at the public's expense, he eventually had to pay the money back and so should Mr Speaker. His recent attempts at the "I'm being picked on by the poshies" smoke screen is not going to work. He must account for his actions and explain why he is taking all this money in the first place.
More importantly he should get Mrs Speaker to take the occasional taxi around his constituency and report back. It tops the league tables for bad health, housing and poverty. All while Mr Speaker is raking it in. He has no constituency office in Springburn, instead the parliamentary office is located in the leafy Lib Dem seat of Bishopbriggs & Milngavie? The office is located in the posh suburb of Glasgow where he lives. I thought the normal procedure was to have your office in the area that you represented but what do I know? This means that all his parliamentary allowances for office support and staff are safely tucked up in the Martin household accounts. And don't expect to be able to pop into his 'office' as it's appointments only. He has been the MP for Springburn since 1979, so what exactly has he done for the area? Not very much by the looks of it but he has certainly done a lot for himself. He is at best an absentee MP with no real connection to his seat.
I am frankly sickened by this grubby and grasping greed. He is only serving to feather his own nest while his own seat languishes in poverty. I would like to see Mr Speaker on performance related pay, that way he could account for his salary. However I doubt he would make the money he earned as a sheet metal worker in the 1960s.
