He sued the Economist for this article and cover:



... and lost

No because gravy train is an emotional exageration the guardian or times never find need nor use of the phrase. Media reporting on affairs should be informative.

Why are we all bothered about half of the 646 MPs getting off with a few quid to a few thousand quid. Some of these exoeses scandels involved a mere special interest movie or a kit kat. The inquest cost 3 times the actual refunds. With the rate that MPs are being payed relative to their senior position of reponsibility, hours worked, personal social cost (you can't go to the match ffs!) etc we are risking a situation whereby only the camerons, milliblans, harmans and osbournes can afford to be politicians. No ones Really going in for the financial rewards and as han solo says everyone get bored sometimes.

Yes but MP's are already amongst the top 10% in terms of pay. I think the real scandals are in the property deals. The rules re expenses are pretty clear and the civil servants giving in to the MPs moats and duck houses were a mistake.

It's been accused of worse than that

Maybe they don't go in for it, but once they are there.... Well then 64k could be hard to turn down, or if you know it isn't forever then they take what they can get elsewhere.

In all industries people milk the system. In the real world those that get caught are fired for gross misconduct, shame the same won't be applied to parliament.

Yes but in most industries people never get found out because no one is looking however in the parliament system there are hundreds of journalists out there with the sole aim of career fcuking every single one of them.

What gets me but no body else is that the media released this story not when it was in the public interest to (ie as soon as they knew about it) but at a timewhen the current government was weak so they knew that they could get the most bang per every buck an mp misused. In reality this whole expenses scandel was just a power hungry media dick swinging competition. Ofcourse with politicians being power hungry they seem to be in the wrong proffesion nowadays to gain and exert it.

You would expect the press to drag this out as long as possible. The Daily Telegraph got a lot of new readers out of this. That was £1/2 million well spent, or whatever the figure was. While expense fiddling goes on everywhere they are not the people who are in charge of the public purse. Politicians should be held to a higher standard.

Just aren't there bigger fish to fry.

All the media knew this was going on the politicians knew it was going on. My local MP ian stewart said people knew about it and were bracing themselves for when it came out. (he was clean BTW)

This country is going no where while people are running these little moral crusades.

I'd like to know if MPs aren't exactly sticking to the spirit of their expenses allowances, thanks - I'm even more curious if they've been 'flipping'

I look at the majority of the press like most of today's TV - mostly predetermined watered-down crap, which is to say I'd prefer a bit more investigative journalism if the news has to have an 'edge' (that would cover the expenses scandal for instance). I'd certainly like to see less of who won a celebrity contest etc, but let's be honest, it's the mainstream public buying into such sh1te that sees it getting published...

My MP was reasonably clean, no problems with housing costs, actually quite reasonable for London. The other expenses were also fine though he was claiming the £400 a month for food.