A few moments ago the team rolled out changes to our biggest and best known site, TheyWorkForYou.com meaning that every visitor to any page of the site will be greeted with a call to arms on the issue of some MPs voting this Thursday to conceal their expenses. And after the vote, we’ll be prominently publishing who voted which way – there should be a couple of million visitors at least before the next election.
Our explicit goal is to have a lot of constituents from around the country let their MPs know they won’t be impressed with a ‘yes’ vote or an abstention (the same thing in this case), and to build our Facebook group to the point where the mainstream media starts to take notice of this Net driven discontent.
Please do everything you can to get as many people as possible writing to their MPs and joining that Facebook group. We’re doing our bit – please do yours. Together we can stop the encouraging trend of more openness in our Parliament scrunching into reverse.
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January 19th, 2009 at 6:39pm
Politicians are held in lower and lower esteem, please do not let this fall into contempt
January 20th, 2009 at 4:46am
How can politicians be trusted , if they can”t be trusted to be honest and open about publishing their expenses?
January 20th, 2009 at 8:36am
One of the things I still believe in with the UK is that we have a (comparatively) open society. Freedom of expression is quite good, as is freedom of information in many cases. Any attempt to restrict either should be fought.
January 20th, 2009 at 8:50am
Completely agree with the sentiments above… politicians at all levels are held in such low regard, with many voters convinced they are just riding the gravy train. This move to prevent full access to MPs’ expenses is wrong in principle and sends completely the wrong message.
MPs should lead the way in earning our trust, showing they work for us and not themselves. Also if the vote for this measure how motivated will they be to pursue open government elsewhere?
January 20th, 2009 at 9:10am
Why all the fuss .If they have nothing to hide what is the problem. When I claim business expenses I have to clearly define when and why the money was spent. They should publish yearly what their expenses are.This is taxpayers money so why not be open and honest ?
January 20th, 2009 at 10:51am
I have to itemise my expenses fully so they can calculate my tax accordingly (source Inland Revenue)and ensure I do not make fraudulently claims.
After all of the negative reporting on current MP’s expense claims I would have thought that that all parties would reach consensus that they should lead by example and stop this incorrect practice.
Then they wonder why people don’t bother to vote, people do not do something when they no longer believe in it… Politicians sadly are no longer believable.
January 20th, 2009 at 11:31am
The MPs must not be allowedc to get away with this. No ‘one rule for one and one rule for others’, especially MPs who should be leading the way in being open with information.
Their standing in this regard is already low enough.
January 20th, 2009 at 3:52pm
The problem is that politics is now a career, as time goes by we will have more and more people joining the ranks of polatitions purely for a salary.
We should go back to having dedicated energetic people who have lives outside politics with experience as business men and women choosing to give something back by being involved in running the country.
Little wonder Labour has brought Britain to it’s present poor economic state when polatitions are judged on what they look like, their age and how likeable they are, rather than whether they have sound principles and significant life experience.
January 21st, 2009 at 1:20pm
Nice work! I just heard the proposal has been shelved.
January 21st, 2009 at 1:20pm
Tom, a note on the update to theyworkforyou.com – it interacts badly with the firefox extention, noscript. With noscript enabled, the orange message appears, but cannot be closed. Irritating.
regards, Geraint.
January 21st, 2009 at 10:32pm
Geraint: Sorry about that, hopefully fixed. I would have spotted this sooner, but I’m not in the habit of reading every blog post comment for bug reports, sorry :)
May 17th, 2009 at 11:03am
I have to live within my means which is my state pension of £5,800. per annum, I do not get any other benefits so why can`t these greedy fraudster mp`s be made to do the same and that is live within their means.It would be a good idea to start on the european parliament next, I have an idea that they would make our mp`s look like saints.