Here’s How the MPs’ Expenses System Should Work
It should be fairly obvious by now that the MPs’ expenses scandal is both a genuine and big story. In my opinion – for what it’s worth – it’s the biggest political story since Thatcher’s resignation in 1990.
The problem isn’t one that can be solved by simply paying a few of the questionable expenses claims back. Parliament needs to demonstrate that it understands the depth of public’s outrage and its desire for a fully open, accountable and honest legislature.
Here is how I think the system should work.
First, it’s clear that the majority of MPs have a need to be resident in two places: their constituency and in London in order to attend Parliamentary sessions. Their primary home should not be one they can designate; it should always be the one in their constituency.
Second, an MP who has a second income of any kind – salary, investments, rent received, whatever – should be ineligible to receive expenses. If they dedicate their life to being an MP, that’s fine. Second incomes are a blight on Parliament. First of all because they raise a clear conflict of interest, but also because they reduce the amount of time that an MP can dedicate to looking out for their constituents. MPs with second incomes should forfeit their parliamentary pay at 50 pence in the pound for each pound they earn outside parliament. So, if they earn £100,000 outside of parliament, their MP’s salary should be reduced by £50,000.
Third, Parliament should pass a law requiring MPs to have only one income after the general election after next. In the interim, none of the remaining provisions I mention would apply to an MP with a second income.
Fourth, Parliament should establish a pool of housing for MPs in the capital and apartments should be allocated by an independent committee that assesses each MP’s need. Furniture and fittings should be provided by the state and repairs undertaken in the same way. MPs should not be able to make a profit out of the way they use their expenses. MPs whose constituency is within a one hour train journey from Westminster should not be eligible for a pooled apartment. MPs should be free to opt out of this arrangement if they wish, but would not be allowed to claim any of the expense of doing so back.
Fifth, all MPs should receive an Oyster card valid for travel anywhere in London for the period of their tenure. They should also receive a standard class season ticket so that they can travel to and from their constituency by train without incurring expenses. Again, these benefits should not be available to MPs with a second income.
Sixth: MPs’ pay should increase every year at the same rate as the minimum wage.
Seventh: MPs should not be allowed to employ a member of their family or of the family of any other MP as an assistant or researcher or in any other capacity unless they are unpaid.
Eighth: Parliament should pay an MP’s assistants and researchers directly, so there would be no need to submit an expenses claim for them.
There are no grounds on which conscientious, hardworking and honest MPs could object to these proposals. And, frankly, who cares about the others?
The familiar, tired counterargument is that without large salaries and expenses, we’ll put the “best people” off becoming MPs. But, by that argument, we’ve already got the best. In which case, they’ll have no problem whatsoever adjusting their lavish lifestyles so that they can better appreciate the lives of the ordinary people they represent.
How Twitter Can Sort Out the #fixreplies #fail
Twitter changed the way that the @reply facility works overnight (UK time). Users are not happy, me among them. I can’t think how many people I now follow who I discovered through this mechanism. I’ve even met up with some of them face to face as a result of conversations started exclusively through Twitter. This is why Twitter is awesome and Facebook is not.
I feel like the electricity company has suddenly decided to change the current in my supply without telling me first.
They say that the setting is confusing and that only 2% of people use it. All I know is that every single person I’ve introduced to Twitter has found it baffling until they’ve turned the setting on. It’s not even the default option so, presumably, the 2% of people who do use it know that they’re doing so and want it that way.
Let’s also not forget that it was us – the early Twitter adopters – who invented the @reply mechanism in the first place. It’s our feature!
Here’s what Twitter have to do to sort it out:
- Restore the ability to set the value
- Restore it to its former value it for all users (the 2%) who had it on
- Consider moving it to some other tab in settings to make it clearer
- Consult on how to make that work
- Apologise for making the change in such a hamfisted way
- Let us get on with using Twitter in whatever way we see fit
If you haven’t already, join me in protesting by using the #fixreplies hashtag in a tweet.
Why Charles Arthur Should Read Things Before Slagging Them Off
Yesterday, my friend Shane Richmond sent me a draft of a blog post to comment on as he does from time to time. I thought it was excellent. Later, he published it on his Telegraph blog. It’s about how David Simon, creator of The Wire is an ‘amateur’ TV producer, in the sense that he didn’t train or do formal study to be one, and how he should be more willing to accept amateur journalism as a result. Simon writes about his early, somewhat fumbling, TV experiences on Homicide: Life on the Street at some length in a note in the UK edition of his brilliant book Homicide (which I reviewed on 26 Books last year).
Shane’s post got tweeted around on Twitter quite a bit and then, a few hours late to the party, super-troll Charles Arthur – technology editor at the Guardian – chipped in with what seemed to be a total misreading of Shane’s post.
Now, of course, David Simon is, in the strictest sense, a professional TV producer, which is to say that he gets paid to do it. But in another sense, he is indeed an ‘amateur’. Shane spells out what he means by using that word about half-way through his post:
But what puzzles me is Simon’s antipathy to the notion of amateur journalists. After all, he’s an amateur television producer. He wasn’t trained in the medium, didn’t work his way up from being a tea boy. Nor did his co-writer and co-producer Ed Burns. Burns was a policeman and teacher. Together they used their experience to craft a television show which explored the worlds in which they had worked. Their backgrounds were far more important than their training in the medium.
Here’s the timeline as far as I can reconstruct it (Twitter post times are adjusted for BST – the API reports them at GMT + 0, while BST is GMT + 1).
- 12:51: Shane publishes the post
- 21:21: Charles responds to someone retweeting it: “if @shanerichmond doesn’t know that David Simon has done utterly amazing journalism in his books, it’s his loss, not Simon’s.” – original tweet.
- 21:23 Shane replies: “@charlesarthur You haven’t read the post have you? – original tweet.
- 22:19 Tim Duckett says : “@shanerichmond @charlesarthur You two aren’t at it again are you? Do we have to send you both up to bed early?” – original tweet
- 22:21 Astonishingly, Charles reveals that he hasn’t actually read Shane’s post despite the fact that the original tweet he responded to contained a link to it. – “@shanerichmond send me a url, I’ll read it.” – original tweet.
- 22:38 Charles finally gets around to reading the post he’s been slagging off, and tweets the first part of his response: “Calling David Simon an “amateur” producer shows an astonishing ignorance of his earlier TV work, eg. Homicide; The Corner….” – original tweet.
- 22:39 Quickly followed by the second part: “…and on other points, the arguments aren’t complete. Is free is the best model, why don’t free papers suck up all adverts from paid ones?” – original tweet.
- Friday, 11:00 Charles responds to MJDodd (note that here, Charles has silently withdrawn his original accusation that Shane said David Simon was an amateur journalist, which was before he’d read Shane’s post): “@MJDodd yes, calling David Simon on The Wire an “amateur producer” indicates a quite astonishing level of lack of research.” – original tweet.
Before I get into this further, I have some interests to declare. A couple of weeks ago, I got so annoyed at the way Charles was gloating over the Telegraph‘s embarrassment over their Twitterfall experiment that I tweeted the following:
I’m astonished at the arrogance, hubris, and all-round cuntishness of Guardian journalists. @charlesarthur, for instance.
That tweet was picked up by Private Eye and erroneously attributed to the Telegraph’s Assistant Editor, Justin Williams. If you want a full run-down of the argument between Shane and Charles, have a look at Malcom Coles’ post That Shane Richmond / Charles Arthur Twackdown in full…
Another interest to declare. The Telegraph was a client of the web agency I used to work for; we built their blogging platform for them. Later I did some contracting for them. On the other hand, I loathe the Telegraph’s politics and am a regular Guardian reader.
And one final interest. I’m close friends with Shane. I first met him in January 2006. He wasted no time in telling me that The Wire was the best show on TV and got me hooked on it there and then. Since then we have watched episodes of The Wire together, listened to podcasts about it in the car and talked about it almost every time we see each other. He’s also urged me to watch Simon’s earlier series for HBO, The Corner (I haven’t done so yet). We also watched several episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street together, finding it very disappointing and only a pale shadow of his later work, although to be fair, Simon didn’t have any real say in how the show was made. So, while I’m naturally sympathetic to Shane’s argument because he’s my friend, I also know how deeply he has thought about The Wire. Anyone who has read his blog knows how long he’s been making the opposite case to David Simon on newspapers – I’m not going to go into that side of his argument here.
If you want more than my word for how much research Shane has done into The Wire and David Simon’s career, then let me point you in the direction of a few of his posts and articles.
First of all is this article from the Telegraph of 22nd May 2007 (which, according to this post is almost a year before Charles even started watching the show). Shane’s article contains one of my favourite quotes about The Wire:
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love The Wire and those who haven’t seen it. Yet.
Then there’s his review of Raphael Alvarez’s The Wire, Truth be Told over on 26 Books from June 2007.
It’s also worth checking out Shane’s post on David Simon’s the ‘bible’ for the first season of The Wire.
I think that takes care of Charles’s claim that Shane’s research is faulty.
Now let’s look at Charles’s objection to Shane’s use of the word ‘amateur’. As Shane spells out in the paragraph I quoted above, and the fact that he placed the word ‘amateur’ in quotes in the title of his post, he’s not using the word literally. He understands that Simon gets paid for his work. He understands and acknowledges that he is supremely good at being a TV producer. He says in his Telegraph article that The Wire is the best show ever on TV, so we can assume that he thinks he’s better than all of the professional – i.e. career – TV producers out there.
Clearly, Shane uses the word ‘amateur’ in its original French sense. As Wikipedia puts it:
Translated from its French origin to the English “lover of”, the term “amateur” reflects a voluntary motivation to work as a result of personal passion for a particular activity. Among the thousands of amateurs who have made important contributions to science and technology are Thomas Edison, Charles Darwin, and Gregor Mendel.
Edison, Darwin and Mendel are exalted company indeed. Describing someone as an amateur in the sense that Shane does is the exact opposite of an insult. It’s the highest compliment you can pay. Simon makes shows like The Wire because of his passion. Getting paid is a bonus.
Charles has form in confusing the meanings of words in the heat of an argument. During the Twackdown, he seemed unable to accept that he’d misused the word “eavesdrop”. Characteristic of the troll, he aggressively suggests that Shane doesn’t understand the meaning of the word – “Buy a bigger dictionary” – before later making the lame excuse that he was a bit tired in a comment on the Twackdown post.
When David Simon says that The Wire would be “something that Euripides might recgonise” you can trust that he’s actually read Euripides. Not so with Charles Arthur when he slags off a post. You also can’t expect Charles to accept when he’s wrong, unlike Shane. When challenged, Charles just ups the trolling ante.
It’s legitimate to take issue with Shane’s argument about the future of newspapers – assuming you’ve actually read the post of course – but you can’t accuse him of a lack of research or ignorance about David Simon’s work both in print and on TV, or that he misused the word ‘amateur’. I hope Charles will accept that and apologise. Maybe he should also consider reading things before slagging them off.
