[Kizzy]

Originally Posted by Livia

Yes, fiddling your expenses IS fraud, you're quite right. However, the MPs that did commit the fraud have already been named and shamed in a whole host of newspapers, I don't see how anyone could have missed it. I can assure you that all expense claims have been tightened up to a ridiculous degree in Parliament, ensuring those MPs (and their staff) who wouldn't ever have dreamed of fiddling their expenses find it almost impossible to claim for even ligitimate stuff these days, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority sees to that. So I have reason to detest the MPs who fiddled, and I do detest them. But MPs expenses have been done to death, and yet every time some feckless member of the unter-class gets caught fiddling a benefits system that's meant to be there to help the most needy, a whole host of people whip out the old tar brush and give everyone in parliament a dab with it.

As you mention that MPs are paid "a fitting wage", I have to disagree there also. They're paid around £60,000pa. That's not even a middle management salary in the private sector, and for the responsibility they take it just ensures that only people of private means can afford to be MPs. People from less well-off backgrounds take their skills and find better paid employment elsewhere.

Well, there we have it livia, they are NOT in the private sector are they. they are public sector workers. If all you want is money and status then take your 'skills' and go i say.
And to be fair she can't be such a 'feckless' member of the underclass if she managed to defraud the DWP for 10 years can she?....I wonder if she has ever thought about a career in politics?....Im not for one second condoning her actions btw.