Tag: MP

Stupid Suggestion


https://app.portsmouth.co.uk/2024/02/10/portsmouth-sewage-flick-drummond-slammed-as-mp-says-people-should-not-flush-toilets-when-its-raining/content.html

It’s no wonder MP Flick Drummond has been criticised.

She has suggested that Jo and Joanna Public should stop flushing the loo, taking a bath, or using their washing machines during times of heavy rain.

Her ridiculous comments are just taking the focus away from the real issue, which is that the water companies are doing very little to prevent the discharge of sewage into our rivers and coastal waters.

Since the start of 2024, there have been 23 confirmed occasions of sewage being released into the Langstone Harbour area.

23 occasions in less than two months. What this shows is that fining the water companies isn’t working.

In 2021, Southern Water was fined £90m for deliberately dumping billions of litres of raw sewage into protected seas over several years for its own financial gain.

Just last year, 2023, Southern Water was instructed to return £43 million to customers by reducing bills for 2024.

And rubbing salt into public wounds, the water companies paid out £65.9bn in dividends to shareholders in the years up to 2022.

So somewhere between paying fines and paying dividends are the huge profits they are making, enabling them to pay huge salaries to their management.

Ian McAulay, CEO for Souther Water, was apparently paid a bonus of £550,900 in 2020/21. This is in addition to a  £435,000-a-year salary and with pension payments and benefits secured a £1.082m pay package.

It’s time that these company execs were hit in their personal pockets. Then, maybe, they would feel inclined to take positive action.

So Flick Drummond, perhaps instead of blaming the public, you could target the true people responsible, the water companies, and their execs.

Perhaps you could also look at the decision-making of the planners, which surrounds the many developments in this area and apply pressure to ensure that the sewage infrastructure is set in place BEFORE building starts.

The public voted you into your position to speak on their behalf. They can easily vote you out.

MPs to no longer receive pay rise


http://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-mps-to-no-longer-receive-pay-rise-of-more-than-1633000-after-ipsa-u-turns-due-to-pandemic-impact-12158160

Giving MPs a £3000 pay rise at this time, would have been immoral. Also, a slap in the face, to the hundreds of thousands of British people, who have lost so much financially and personally, during the pandemic.

It’s the right decision. Indeed, given Britain’s financial state and the economical hard road yet to be travelled, I find it hard to forsee that such a pay rise would be acceptable anytime soon.

Nadine Dorries ‘I’m a Celebrity’ appearance – So What !


The brouhaha over Dorries decision to take time out to appear in the ITV program will  only come back and bite the Tories on their collective bum.

Fickel as they are, much of the great British Public will get behind her just to spite her naysayer colleagues in Westminster. The rest will be voting for her to take all the challenges as a form of punishment. Almost like having a member of parliament in the stocks but getting someone else to throw the rotten tomatoes.

There is an imbalance  in the collective reaction. On the one hand there are those that believe that she is doing something wrong, that she is breaking some code by exposing herself to public ridicule  that is almost guaranteed by this program. On the other hand there are those who, perhaps not so “tongue in cheek”, are pleased that she will be off the grid and out of their hair for a month. But other MPs have stayed active despite much more serious transgressions. One has only to look back a few weeks to be reminded of a certain MP who swore at policemen doing their duty, Was he suspended ?

What use is suspending her anyway, after all she is incommunicado while sequestered in the jungle.

I suspect that the cries of anguish from her  colleagues also smack of more that a little jealousy, just a smidgen of “Why didn’t they ask me?”

Senior Conservatives are furious that Ms Dorries has brought the party into disrepute by abandoning her constituents while she earns up to £40,000 as a game show contestant.

Disrepute ? What about MPs expenses ? Many of those shouting out about Ms Dorries activities should look a little closer to home. I am sure many of them have had to change the way in which they claim expenses and how many of them can truly take the high ground and say that they have nothing to reproach themselves for.

Presumably under parliamentary rules she will declare any earnings she makes.

Surely the Tory party should be assuming “innocent until proven guilty”

The Conservative Party said Ms Dorries must “justify herself” to her constituents, but declined to say whether she has broken the MPs’ code of conduct stating they must always behave with “probity”.

There is a saying “No publicity is bad publicity”. Until this issue broke I for one had never heard of Nadine Dorries. Now she is all over our television news programs, talk shows and on the front pages of the dailies.

What harm will she have done to her party, very little to my way of thinking. What harm will she have done to politics in general. None, politicians are all in it for self and the power over us “the plebs”.

What harm will she have done to her own reputation, very little. She will have gained more exposure. More people will know her name. Some will try and say that she has let her constituents down by being absent and not dealing with their problems. In one month it is questionable how much she would have done when you split her time between constituency and Westminster.

The ones that have done the most harm in my view are the chief whip and supporters who have shown how petty they can be with this knee jerk suspension. Don’t they realise that there are real issues that they should be dealing with.

Conservatives mocked over Nadine Dorries ‘I’m a Celebrity’ appearance – Telegraph.