Double standards over MPs expenses?
Have you seen the clip where Lord George Faulkes ?
The Labour MSP clashed with Carrie Gracie after she asked if MPs who'd abused their expenses should pay the money back. Lord Foulkes told her off for interrupting, accused the media of ignoring the good work MPs did and demanded to know how much she was paid.
Told it was £92,000 a year, he said she was being paid "nearly twice as much an MP - to come on and talk nonsense".
...and to think I do the same for much less than that!
But has Lord Foulkes got a point about the transparency of publicly-funded employees? Or is he merely trying to deflect attention from the controversy over MPs' expenses? He took some of your calls on today's Morning Extra.
It follows on from Tuesday's phone-in when we discussed similar sentiments from the actor Stephen Fry. In an with the Â鶹Éç's Newsnight on Monday night he said: "I've cheated expenses and I've fiddled things, you have, 'course you have. Let's not confuse what politicians get really wrong — things like wars, things where people die — with the rather tedious bourgeois obsession with whether or not they've charged for their wisteria."
"We get the politicians we deserve, it's our fault more than anybody else's this been going on for years and suddenly because a journalist discovers it it's the biggest story ever."
'Nonsense' said those of you who took part in Tuesday's programme. Despite my attempts to argue Stephen Fry's point on his behalf, you weren't having any of it! And the public's revulsion with MPs appears to be backed up by a suggesting a sharp drop in support for Labour and the Conservatives, with the Liberal Democrats and smaller parties, including the British National Party, benefiting.
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