Keeping It In The Family 3
Yesterday the Ulster Unionists put out their list of MLAs who employ family members. Here it is:
Billy Armstrong: Wife and daughter----both part-time.
Roy Beggs: Wife----part-time.
David Burnside: No relatives employed.
Fred Cobain: No relatives employed.
Robert Coulter: Wife and son----both part-time.
Sir Reg Empey: No relatives employed.
Tom Elliott: No relatives employed.
Leslie Cree: No relatives employed.
Sam Gardiner: No relatives employed.
Danny Kennedy: No relatives employed.
John McCallister: No relatives employed.
David McClarty: Wife----part-time.
Basil McCrea: Sister----part-time.
Alan McFarland: No relatives employed.
Michael McGimpsey: No relatives employed.
David McNarry: No relatives employed.
Ken Robinson: Wife----part-time: son----full-time.
George Savage: Wife and daughter-in-law----part-time.
I'm 
颁辞尘尘别苍迟蝉听听 Post your comment
Never mind whether UUP MLAs employ their family, but would you pay 300 quid to hear some minor Assembly Member's bag carrier tell you all about the Assembly?
Is this the best talent which can be found in Ulster to speak at a political conference?
Dear help us all!!
Mark
NOT GOOD ENOUGH, SIR REG, NOT GOOD ENOUGH
Over the past week Sir Reg has been bleating about how the Public [and here I quote from his letter to the Prime Minister*] 鈥 subjects public representatives to ridicule and derision.鈥 I believe Sir Reg overestimates the regard with which the Public holds local Politicians. I would go further and say that many people view the bulk of Assembly Members as self-serving, lying, deceitful, Charlatans whose main commitment is focused on feathering their own nests.
Let me say that if this list is Sir Reg鈥檚 idea of transparency then he needs new spectacles. What he has provided is information that, more or less, amounts to diddly-squat. Had Sir Reg really wanted to clean out UUP stables he would have provided the Public with much more detail about each MLA, for example:
路 EMPLOYMENT OF FAMILY MEMBERS: Names, Job Titles; Salary details; Full or Part-time (hours worked); Recruitment policy.
路 EMPLOYMENT NON-FAMILY: Names, Job Titles; Salary details; Full or Part-time (hours worked); Recruitment policy.
路 CONSTITUENCY OFFICE ALLOWANCES: Constituency office address; Name of Landlord/Owner of building; Details of any familial relationship with Owner/Landlord; Precise details of amounts (i) claimed and (ii) paid for rent & rates; Breakdown of other running costs (light, heat, power etc).
路 EXPENSES: Full disclosure of all expenses including Travel Expenses and Accommodation.
路 EU MP/WESTMINSTER MP: Let鈥檚 not forget Jim Nicholson and Lady Sylvia. Comprehensive details in line with the above.
路 COUNCILLORS: Many of them are just as venal as MLAs so comprehensive details in line with the above should also enter the public domain.
In conclusion, rather than producing his meaningless list, Sir Reg should stop pussyfooting about and do something concrete to tackle the problem now, rather than await the UK-wide solution that he seeks in his letter to Gordon Brown. * What I have outlined above would at least be a step in the right direction.
*
Susie
Carryduff
Suzie, there's about a 50% chance you're employed in the public sector. If so, what are you paid? In detail please.
Mark
OPEN LETTER TO MICHAEL SHILLIDAY: WANNABE POLITICIAN & ANOTHER DEFENDER OF THE INDEFENSIBLE
Dear Michael
I apologize for the delay in replying to your comment of 22 February which I became aware of just last evening.
Let me start by putting my cards on the table. I believe the majority of Politicians are a Shower of Shysters. Locally, the recent revelations about doubtful practices surrounding allowances claimed for Constituency Offices; the shenanigans around the Causeway Visitors鈥 Centre; and the Ballee land sale further confirmed me in my belief, as did the poor response from local Parties to public calls for transparency in such matters.
Let鈥檚 turn to the challenge you set me in your response. Your conjecture about whether or not I earn a crust from the Public Sector is irrelevant, argumentative and immaterial. No matter, since you鈥檝e taken the fight to me on the basis of lack of transparency in the public sector, let me mount a brief and unbiased defence on its behalf.
As far as I know, public sector workers, in the main, operate within a tight framework of checks and balances in relation to their salaries, expenses & allowances. That framework includes strict procedural guidelines governing the claiming of expenses & allowances. Moreover, their salaries, expenses and allowances are subject to audit by Departmental Internal Auditors and by the Northern Ireland Audit Office. Contrast those safeguards with the unregulated systems that allow MLAs, MPs and MEPs a free-for-all in claiming expenses & allowances 鈥 eg, poor standards of receipting of claims and little or no external checks as to the probity of using allowances to pay [probably inflated] rent to family members for constituency offices. Good Lord, MLAs have a bloomin鈥 license to print money.
Equivocation about expenses and allowances is reinforcing the Public鈥檚 notion that Politicians are shady, dodgy characters. Politicians will never have the Public鈥檚 trust while they continue to hide the true pecuniary reward that elected office enables them to accrue. Sir Reg had a golden opportunity to give a moral lead by putting matters right within the UUP; he failed miserably.
That鈥檚 it. I rest my (brief)case.
Yours sincerely
Susie
Carryduff
26 March, 2008