PoliticalConcern.com

It isn’t only Britain’s politicians who are rorting their expenses. It seems Australia’s politicians are up to it as well. Particularly in Queensland.
But this isn’t the great scandal that it has become in Britain, far from it they are allowed to spend their expenses allowance on private expenses.
Now, this is not what their expenses allowance is meant to be for. It is meant to cover the expenses in supporting their own electorates. Things like supporting local events, fundraising, and other such expenses. However, politicians in safe seats would seem to think that they don’t need to use these funds in a way to benefit their electorate and gain the favour of their constituents.
One Queensland politician Whitsunday MP Jan Jarratt, who is also Parliamentary Secretary for Employment and Economic Development, has used this money for personal expenses. Ms Jarratt’s statements indicate she has transferred amounts of between $1000 and $3000 to her husband and gave her son amounts between $200 and $500.
She has also used this money to pay her credit card bill as well as $2800 in council rates for her Cannonvale home and $1160 council rates for her Townsville investment property.
The Queensland Parliamentary rules state “An allowance is paid to each Member. It is to be expended at the total discretion of the Member” and the expenses are taxed, but this does not excuse politicians from spending these allowances in an appropriate way and in the manner in which they were intended to be used. After all, even though they are given the total discretion these funds are meant to benefit their electorate not their financial situation and their families.
A spokesman for Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said there was nothing new about MPs spending allowances how they liked. “This has been the case for many years.”
However, Opposition Leader John-Paul Langbroek said he hoped MPs were spending their allowances wisely.
“The allowance system in Queensland is meant to be used by members judiciously in the servicing of their electorates,” he said.

U.S. President Barack Obama has always maintained a nice clean down to earth image. He appears to be very approachable and friendly. As far as we know hasn’t bothered any White House interns, yet, and he is the dedicated family man. How could anybody find anything wrong with him. Ok maybe people will criticise his political leanings but these are just their opinions of his ideology and not a real criticism of the person.

Then you have Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, the most powerful woman in Washington. It is Pelosi who the Republicans seem to be going after now.
With her perfectly coifed hair, perfectly tailored suits and her rich banker husband she is exactly the type of out of touch ‘Limousine Liberal’ that the Democrats have been looking for. She is also not so clean when it comes to scandal. Pelosi is one of a handful lawmakers who was briefed by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2002 on “waterboarding” and other extreme interrogation tactics used against prisoners in the Bush era. She now accuses the agency of lying to her and hiding what it was doing.
Republicans have attacked Pelosi for making unsubstantiated and damaging accusations against a crucial national security agency.
The man who once had her job, former Republican speaker Newt Gingrich, says Pelosi is lying in a way that is “despicable, dishonest and vicious.”
Now that Obama has ordered that such methods be stopped Republicans are asking why other Democrats who could have stopped these tactics, did nothing.
This is where Pelosi becomes the chink in Obama’s armour. The House of Representatives is the place where taxes and spending starts. So almost every one of Obama’s plans will have to pass through Pelosi.
Obama is still remarkably popular and most of the country hopes that he’ll succeed in rebuilding the economy and ending the war in Iraq.
The President would seem to be immune from easy attacks so the opposition needs someone who isn’t. In steps Pelosi. As far as targets go she is the one. She has the out of touch image and the back door scandal to be the weak Democrat link the the Republicans are looking for.

British MP’s have had a bad time lately with revelations that some of them have been rorting their expenses in private spending.
The latest of the MP’s to be caught up is Conservative MP Sir Peter Viggers, who has been forced to announce his resignation Thursday over the STG1,600 ($3,253) duck island installed in his estates pond.



MP Viggers, who has been MP for Gosport on the southern English coast since 1974, was ordered by Conservative Party chief David Cameron to quit or be fired after the revelation.
Other MP’s caught up in this scandal include Tory MP Andrew MacKay with his wife Julie Kirkbride also facing calls to quit as an MP, Labour MP Eric Joyce, Welsh MPs Hywel Williams, Elfyn Llwyd and Adam Price who used expenses to research a possible impeachment of Tony Blair, Senior Liberal Democrat MP Malcolm Bruce, Conservative MP Derek Conway are just a few to be named.
And the scandal just gets messier as it is revealed that the former SAS soldier who blew the whistle, John Wick, has left a trail of bad debts from a succession of failed businesses.
Mr Wick has reportedly left a string of 16 collapsed businesses behind him, with debts totalling more than £7million. His failed business ventures are said to have left former military comrades tens of thousands of pounds out of pocket.
I guess the question has to be asked have his action really been done out of a public duty or has it just been a greedy move to sell his big story to the media.
I don’t think this story has finished here so I would keep my eye out for more news on this one.

What a scandal it as for Australian politics it as when a blog site posted sexy pictures of women from the Australian Liberal Party in an effort to recruit more young men to join the party.

In a media frenzy the site was exposed as terribly sexist and shameful. However the websites author, Washington-based blogger and member of the Ashfield branch of the Young Liberals Tim Andrews wrote “To put it simply, we have all the hot girls”.

Amongst the frenzied reaction to the blog were comments from the likes of the former federal sex discrimination commissioner and NSW Liberal MP Pru Goward “I’m disappointed that he’s misjudged the importance of a political party like ours, which for so long has defended the dignity of men and women,” she said. “We do need to recruit young people . . . and I commend Tim for having a go, but I think that we have to remember that people join political parties because of the facts, not the figures.”
It is good to see that the Liberals not only have the pretty women but the witty ones as well.
NSW Liberal leader Barry O’Farrell was not so impressed, he said “I find it a disappointing and unacceptable posting,” he said. “I am offended by the some of the blog responses.”
Mr Andrews based his blog idea on conservative commentator P.J. O’Rourke’s “babe-theory”, which suggests if you have attractive women in a party, there is an exponential rise in the number of men wanting to join.
I am sure it is a commendable theory but is this really the motive you want for people joining a political party.
Australian Labor Leader Prime Minister Kevin Rudd refused to be drawn on the quality of women in the Labor Party saying only that they had people with “qualities of their own”.
While I am sure the site was meant as a bit of fun, it is a shame that the Australian political scene can be distracted by such a trivial matter when there are so many more important issues in these times.
Tim Andrews has taken the post down, but has promised that a revised version will be published very soon. I am sure we can’t wait for that.