Tag: Annie

In all the furore over MPs’ expenses, Mr Wills must be feeling fairly calm. For some time now he has published full details of his expenses. For example, his statement of expenses for 2008/09 is itemised down to individual items, such as filing folders bought for £3.61 on 23rd March from a supplier called Banner. When it comes to the Additional Costs Allowance (the allowance for second homes and living in said second home) which has been the centre of attention lately, although his claims are not cheap (£19753.56 in 2007/08 and £18476.53 in 2008/09), they are restricted to paying for his mortgage, council tax, utility bills, telephone and insurance.

In contrast, the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove, has been far less open. Until today she has published no more than the house of commons authorities published. Her claims do not match her voting record.

I pride myself upon being an open and accountable Member of Parliament and I am happy for my constituents to see what allowances I use in order to serve the people of South Swindon.

Anyone that claims that whilst consistently voting against such openness clearly doesn’t understand what openness and transparency mean. Only in the last month as the anger has mounted does she seem to have had a change of heart.

So it was that late last week Ms Snelgrove put her signature to a letter urging her colleagues to publish their expenses sooner rather than later.

I will be preparing my expenses over the coming days and will make them public to my local newspaper on Monday 18 May at 2pm.

This she has now done, but in comparison with Mr Wills, Ms Snelgrove’s effort is half-hearted: it’s a summary-level breakdown of the Additional Costs Allowance rather than a full breakdown, and there is no breakdown at all of her other allowances. It is also accompanied by a rambling attempt to justify her troughing at the public expense.

In addition to following the rules I have based my expenses claims on two principles ever since I became an MP in 2005.

That’s the now thoroughly discredited rules.

The first is that I don’t want to profit from the taxpayer in the short or long-term.

Well, she may not be profiting, but she’s certainly been living very comfortably — some might say luxuriously — in her second home at our expense. Over £4000 spent on her living room in three years, over £2000 on her bedroom and over £500 on bedding in the same period.

The second is that my claims should be for expenses I would not have if I was doing another job working in Swindon only, rather than living and working in two places (London and Swindon) as MPs have to.

I presume then that she would have chosen to starve if she hadn’t been an MP, as she claimed £4300 on food in one year.

The majority of items I have bought are one-offs, apart from replacement items when a cupboard collapsed and all the contents were smashed, and water damage to towels and bedding following a leak.

Was she not insured? Perhaps not as it was only in 2007/08 that she claimed £137.23 for insurance.

I want to see the House of Commons introduce a system which is transparent yet enables all MPs to fulfill (sic) their parliamentary and constituency duties fully

That’s not what her voting record suggests.

I also pledge to clean up the second jobs scandal, where many MPs work not for their constituencies but for commercial or lobby companies despite receiving a full parliamentary salary.

Lets not forget that every Labour MP is sponsored by a union. It’s not just those with second jobs that represent interests other than those of their constituents.

I want to be accountable to constituents in Swindon South and I want to maintain your trust.

On the evidence so far, Ms Snelgrove’s failed on both counts.

It seems that the University of Bath now wish to seal their departure from Swindon in rubble. The university has submitted a planning application ‘for the demolition of main campus building and all associated outbuildings/ sheds.’ Now, I wouldn’t go as far as the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove, and describe it as ‘a wonderful campus building’, but as school buildings of the 1950s and 60s go it’s not that bad.

Note also how effective Ms Snelgrove’s attempt to protect Oakfield Campus has been. In the face of her own government’s legislation — which obliges owners to pay full business rates on empty commercial properties — it’s so far been a total failure.

I can’t help but feel that the local red nest is trying to distract my attention from something… the economy perhaps. The day after Mr Darling announced the worst government debt in over sixty years, along with cuts in services — or ‘efficiencies’ as he called it — and increases in tax, I received a letter from the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove. This letter told me what the government is splurging my money on, and expected me to be grateful for that. Increases in child tax credits, building Children’s Centres and building more government buildings may be good for construction workers with young children, but are not much use to anyone else.

Just a couple of days later, another leaflet from the local red nest dropped onto my doormat. This one talked about a budget where you pay more and get less in return, but they were referring to Swindon Borough Council’s budget, whereas I was thinking of Mr Darling’s.

In these tough times Labour is helping people and investing in services.

Ruining the economy and running up government debts of £1,185bn by 2013 is an odd way of helping.

Parliament has today published the expenses and allowances claimed by MPs in 2007/08. The figures for Swindon’s MPs are:

Allowances

Travel expenses

Add in their salaries of over £60,000 and each of them has cost well over £200,000 a year. Mr Wills already publishes his expenses in full detail but Ms Snelgrove is more reticent. She may be proud of what she delivers for that price; I think the people of Swindon deserve a refund.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove, visits her constituency too rarely to have even a basic grasp of its geography. The Department of Communities and Local Government has announced — as part of the government’s splurging of our money to try and fix the financial crisis it helped create — that it is providing £2.09M for the “Wichelstowe Pedestrian & Cycle Bridge, Swindon”. That’s a bridge between West Swindon and what will, at some point, be West Wichel. Ms Snelgrove’s response to that announcement is a little confused, to say the least.

The Government has recognised how vital a bridge over the railway is to Swindon’s regeneration. I’m pleased the town’s MPs, working with the council, have managed to secure this funding. It also supports the notion of a university in the centre of Swindon.

Is Ms Snelgrove thinking of tackling both obesity and the collapse in the housing market by housing students in otherwise unsellable new houses in Wichelstowe and forcing them to walk via a roundabout route to a university at North Star? Or is she just confused, thinking of the plans within Swindon Borough Council’s Central Area Action Plan for a footbridge over the railway between the town centre and North Star? That would support the siting of a university (or indeed anything) at North Star, close to Swindon’s centre. A bridge between West Swindon and West Wichel clearly — unless you’re a geographically inept MP — does no such thing.

Even if one is charitable and surmises that Ms Snelgrove was responding off the cuff to a vague question from a journalist about a footbridge over the railway, a question that wasn’t specific about where that bridge was, one thing is indisputable. If Ms Snelgrove doesn’t know which bridge it is that she’s talking about, contrary to her claim she can’t have had any part in securing its funding.

The government has recently announced that it is giving Swindon Borough Council an extra £428,873.52 — yes, the figures are calculated down to individual pennies — of tax payers’ money (or more accurately, given the way the government has squandered our money, of tax payers’ debt). According to the government press release, there are no strings attached to this money.

Local Government Minister John Healey has today confirmed that 360 councils will receive their share of £100million within the next few days, to be used as they see fit to help meet local needs and priorities – particularly helpful in this difficult economic climate.

Naturally, the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove, has been quick to comment.

I am calling on Swindon Borough Council to use this money to save Old Town and Walcot Libraries and look at how the Groundwell Park & Ride can be kept open…. I will be asking the Council for full details of how they intend to spend this money and to make sure it isn’t swallowed up within the Council.

’Tis an odd choice that. Now, as I’ve made clear, I’m no fan of the proposals to close the Park & Ride service. I don’t find Mr Edwards’ latest argument for not supporting the service convincing either, as it’s far better to seek a long term future for the service with it still running than with it closed. However, though both it and the library closures have received plenty of publicity, they affect relatively few of Ms Snelgrove’s constituents — particularly the Park & Ride service which is in Mr Wills’ patch. Something that affects far more of her constituents but has received far less publicity is the sharp increase in the cost of Residents’ Parking Permits. On that, Ms Snelgrove has nothing to say. And I say that as someone that neither lives in a Residents’ Parking zone nor owns a car.

It really shouldn’t surprise Ms Snelgrove that she’s known as the government’s representative in South Swindon when she chooses to support issues for their political point scoring value rather than for their impact on her constituents.

There appears to be a difference of opinion in the local red nest on whether or not Swindon Borough Council should dip into its reserves to keep council tax down. On the one hand, there’s the Snelgrovian view, expressed last November, that it’s good to spend some reserves to keep council tax low.

I don’t know how much Swindon Council has in reserves but I do know that the council needs to be thinking how it can do this [cut council tax]…. We all have to make sure that people are helped so I think that Swindon Council should be looking at its capital reserves and seeing if it can do something even if it is a one-off.

Then there’s the view of Mr Small, adamant that use of reserves is a bad thing.

There seems to be a £1.8m gap between the 3.5 per cent increase and what is needed to balance the budget. Some of that will be paid for with one-off monies. This budget is going to give us a debt of at least £2m because of the use of one-off monies. That will have to be carried over into next year’s budget.

Perhaps Mr Small should give his friend Mr Brown some advice about keeping out of debt.

I see that Ms Snelgrove is having trouble with her memory.

I pride myself upon being an open and accountable Member of Parliament and I am happy for my constituents to see what allowances I use in order to serve the people of South Swindon.

She seems to have forgotten that in 2007 she voted against making it a legal obligation for those expenses to be published.

The government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove seems to think that building societies can survive without savers. The Nationwide Building Society has said that, for its tracker mortgages, it will not follow further Bank of England interest rate cuts. It is doing this to protect its savers.

Savings rates are at an historic low and this move means we will not be forced into a position where we could have to cut savings rates more aggressively than we would otherwise like to

Without savers, there can be no mortgages and if interest rates fall further, the more savvy savers will find other things to do with their money. This rather basic economic truth seems to be beyond Ms Snelgrove’s comprehension.

Should there be a further cut in interest rates I will be talking to Nationwide about what it can do to pass on the cut to customers…. It is important that lenders pass on interest rate cuts – we need to do whatever it takes to help businesses, people, and the wider economy in Swindon.

One of the reasons the economy is in its current mess — apart from this government’s profligacy with our money over many years — is that people borrowed far too much and saved far too little. Demanding that financial institutions punish rather than encourage savers will do nothing to improve the long-term health of the economy, nor will it increase the availability of mortgages.

Writing as someone who is not only one of Ms Snelgrove’s constituents, but who also has both savings and a mortgage with the Nationwide, I’d prefer further interest rate cuts not to be passed on, thank you.

It seems Ms Snelgrove has been a little forgetful when it comes to paying her internet bills.