Comments for Big Sticks and Small Carrots

Comment on Accountability by Annie Besant

Annie Besant — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 13:27:10 +0000

Hey, Big Stick, you on yur holidays or something/

Comment on Fiddling by Oscar Wildebeest

Oscar Wildebeest — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:29:04 +0000

Be fair, Garry, old chap. Not only did Mrs Conway have to organise his diary and arrange meetings - she had to sleep with the fat old toad, as well. I’d demand a lot more than £40K pa for that.

Nice to see you’re still in business, by the way.

Comment on Dean Godson: “Research Director” by If you only knew said,

If you only knew said, — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:50:15 +0000

If you actually investigate rather than speculate you would find out.

Staines worked on World Briefing and British Briefing. They were spook-publications associated with Brian Crozier, who was a CIA bagman at times. Crozier and Godson senior go back.

There are some publicly verifiable traces of the involvement of Staines. The whole Contra thing he was part of at the European end was part of ‘Project Democracy’. Which was a DIA (not a typo) funded enterprise from the people who brought you Iran-Contra.

I know this to be true. However I am guessing that the Policy Exchange clumsy attempt to manufacture evidence was based on the Institute for the Study of Conflict model of think tank work. The ISC was a private sector ally of the IRD.

Crozier set up a news features syndication service which fed stories and articles into the press. The right wing blogs of today fulfill a similar role.

Comment on Accountability by Bloggerheads

Bloggerheads — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 06:29:00 +0000

March Statporn…

Server logs show approx. 71,000 ‘unique’ visitors to the site. Google Analytics says 25,016 Absolute Unique Visitors involving the main weblog alone. Server logs show approx. 400,000 page views site-wide, but only approx. 168,000 involved real people…

Comment on Accountability by Scottish Roundup » Blog Archive » Swearing, but not swearing allegiance

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 12:23:56 +0000

[…] of wasted money, MPs’ expenses are still under scrutiny. Garry wonders why MPs find it so much more difficult than the rest of us to get receipts for things. Mr. […]

Comment on Accountability by thefatman

thefatman — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 14:09:28 +0000

It surprises me so few commentators on the MPs expenses issue seem to have looked at the regime used in teh Scottish parliament. Here every penny is accountable with receipts and published on line right down to 70p for newspaper! Taxis include a note of where they were going and why (not sure if that is required but seems common practice)
Take a look http://mspallowances.scottish.parliament.uk/MSPAllowances/default.aspx

Why can’t they save some time and money and clone this system?

Because they have things to hide.

thefatman

Comment on Accountability by Sim-O

Sim-O — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 10:27:05 +0000

I even get asked if I want a receipt when I top up the credit on my mobile by text.
also, what’s to stop them spending £100 and putting down as 5 things that might cost £20.

Comment on Accountability by ZinZin

ZinZin — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:25:44 +0000

What about prostitutes and drug dealers? I bet they aren’t that keen to provide a receipt for your records…

It depends on what your buying, some of those services may cost less than £25.

Seriously though its rather silly this no receipt if its under £25 rule. They can use public monies to buy freeview boxes, DVDs, books, CDs…..

Comment on Accountability by ian

ian — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:08:49 +0000

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/faqs/general.htm#6

6. I suspect someone of evading tax, what can I do?

Any suspicion can be reported in confidence to any local Tax Office.

Alternatively, you can call our Anti-fraud Helpline on 0800 788887.

It is open Monday to Friday 8:30am to 5pm

Shall we start with Mr Conway?

Comment on Accountability by john b

john b — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:28:06 +0000

According to music business lore, hookers and drug dealers go down in the accounts as “fruit and flowers”…

But yeah. I work at a company with quite a civilised expenses policy [previously, worked for one with a downright evil expenses policy…], and even they require a receipt for everything.