{"id":157,"date":"2004-10-21T10:38:21","date_gmt":"2004-10-21T10:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2004\/10\/21\/mps-not-as-corrupt-as-sin-shock\/"},"modified":"2004-10-21T10:38:21","modified_gmt":"2004-10-21T10:38:21","slug":"mps-not-as-corrupt-as-sin-shock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2004\/10\/mps-not-as-corrupt-as-sin-shock\/","title":{"rendered":"MPs not as corrupt as sin shock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Political cartoonists who find themselves in a bit of a fix for deadlines might like to check out <a href=\"http:\/\/politics.guardian.co.uk\/commons\/story\/0,9061,1332238,00.html\">the report on MPs&#8217; finances due out today<\/a>. Go on, just throw in a trough labelled &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/news.independent.co.uk\/uk\/politics\/story.jsp?story=574437\">taxpayers&#8217; money<\/a>&#8221; and some porcine politicians &#8211; please, it&#8217;ll make a change from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0413774503\/pd_ka_0\/202-2011882-2698223\">all the bloody chimps<\/a>. In the meantime, the rest of us can all look forward to a good nosy.<\/p>\n<p>MPs are in general good value, especially in comparison to <a href=\"http:\/\/usgovinfo.about.com\/library\/weekly\/aa031200a.htm\">certain other countries<\/a>. Perhaps we should pay them more, to ensure that they really are independent, and have no need to go off cap in hand to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/bat\/article\/0,2763,540692,00.html\">tobacco companies<\/a> (for example). They might not need to go through all the impertinence and bother of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publications.parliament.uk\/pa\/cm\/cmregmem\/memi02.htm\">declaring their interests<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Or perhaps we should bring back something along the lines of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www2.warwick.ac.uk\/fac\/arts\/history\/undergrad\/modules\/hi254\/timetable\/fact6\/\">Property Qualification Act of 1711<\/a>, to ensure the right sort of people for the job.<\/p>\n<p><b>Nosemonkey addition<\/b>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.40k.org.uk\/blog\">Straight Banana<\/a> has a good post comparing UK MP and MEP cash situations <a href=\"http:\/\/www.40k.org.uk\/blog\/2004\/10\/tristan-smithers-johnson-mep\">here<\/a> (although the page formatting seems to bugger up when doing direct links).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Political cartoonists who find themselves in a bit of a fix for deadlines might like to check out the report on MPs&#8217; finances due out today. Go on, just throw in a trough labelled &#8220;taxpayers&#8217; money&#8221; and some porcine politicians &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2004\/10\/mps-not-as-corrupt-as-sin-shock\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}