In the UK recently, one of our newspapers has uncovered a scandal in our Politicians expenses claims. Basically, our politicians are able to claim expenses, such as food bills and also things for their 2nd homes such as furniture and decorating etc. (as they have one home in London and one in the constituency which they represent) Now, what has been happening is that politicians have been falsely and knowingly claiming for things they have not purchased or claiming for things out of the remit of the expenses system. Since the scandal was exposed, many Politicians have come out and said that they will pay the money back, sometimes up to £250,000 of false claims and this has been accepted by the authorities. However, my question is that if this were a normal person who had falsely and knowingly claimed benefits that they knew they were not entitled to, would paying them back be sufficient?
my personal opinion: it is stealing, paying back does not mean they can escape it, unless if paying back came voluntarily after admitting and not after being caught, if a normal person stays 1 year in jail for stealing, they should stay 2 or 3 years for it if not more, for stealing, misusing trust, and abusing position.
I'm glad someone else in the UK agrees with me, I am not finding much support for my argument and it was annoying me. They are only paying it back because they got caught, if they hadn't been found out they would still be making their false claims. Are there any other people in UK who support this?
There is no-one in the UK who supports this as far as I know, the only people who support it are the obese lazy people who don't have a job who depend on Labour to give them tons of benefits!
I know of UK companies who will have you prosecuted for fraud if you make false expenses claims, I do not see why it should be different when it is public money being stolen. Also agree with cutting benefits, virtually every house in council estates these days has a Sky system and broadband. Whilst we allow these people the vote we will continue to have politicians pander to them and only see an increase in benefits etc. My missus, who is highly educated and has worked her ass off her whole life got no pay rise this year, as with most of us, yet, the minimum wage and benefits went up...we got it all a bit upside down right now and it is about time we took a harder line with these dregs of society.
It's obviously fraud, but they get away with it because they can. They're making what £70,000+ a year? Then bitching about not having enough money. If they didn't want to use a fraction of their money to pay for a second house, then don't become a politician. Simply paying back the money is not sufficient, they should all be punished >= what the normal citizen would have to. I know obese, lazy people who don't have a job and depend on benefit, and I wouldn't exactly say £47/week is a tonne of money, and though these people are lazy they do want to work. However, the people who don't want to work are on incapacity and are druggies and alcoholics, also on housing benefit (you can get it for private properties). I myself am on benefit and I can't afford broadband or anything, have to rely on other people for stuff like that, and I'm pushed about by the job centre having to attend pointless courses that don't help at all, I look for work and still get sent so they can tell you different to the last company giving their way of writing a letter and get you to send them to all the companies you can, the same companies you wrote to at the last place. As well as phoning them, I'm always walking in to shops asking if there's any jobs they must be sick of hearing it. The DWP should chase up all the druggies cause they're wasting tax payer money on shit. Advisors don't care as long as they process you so they stay in a job. Just another statistic. I think benefit should be stopped to those who genuinly don't deserve iit and want to leech off the nation, and stop MP expenses, then pay more to those who do deserve it and give everyone some money. Another thing I thought, was take £1 off everyone's JSA (like £2mil there) then award people who are actively trying to find work but can't because of the shortage, that will keep them going for a while and they can be released from JSA for a bit with the resulting excess being put back in to this scheme. This could also be used to help struggling single parents etc. who just can't work because of their situation. No one should complain about being short £1 or £2 a fortnight and it means other people will be able to breeth financially. Of course not everyone would benefit from this and it's sort of a lottery but it would/should encourage more people to look for work. But again at the same time the jobs just aren't there.