The conference was in session and I was loitering in the lobby area waiting to provide assistance to delegates, but mostly twiddling my thumbs, when Mrs Beckett walked in with her husband and Labour's then prospective parliamentary candidate (and now MP) for Lincoln, Gillian 'Gilly' Merron.
I walked over and introduced myself and Mrs Beckett asked if I knew anywhere they could grab lunch, which I didn't, not being a local, but I suggested that as it was Skegness there were likely many places to choose from. Randomly, she then invited me to join them, so I abandoned my post and went off with them for lunch.
I had a beef curry (and milk, bizarrely), the Becketts had scampi and Merron had the salad. At the end of the meal Mrs Beckett paid, though I somehow ended up with the receipt. Probably grabbed it as a souvenir. Given the recent troubles, it makes me wonder if she claimed my lunch on her expenses ;)
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3 comments:
If you have the receipt she couldn't have handed it in to claim? :)
Also, it sounds like a working lunch meeting, which seems perfectly fair to charge to expenses...
Also, it was £26.10 :)
I think this whole expenses thing is ridiculous, the media is making a mountain out a molehill. Yes, MPs have been taking the piss, but I'd far rather it was that than they were taking bribes from industry, and I'm far more worried about them wasting billions on pointless wars and Orwellian measures to control the population while patients are dying because the NHS doesn't have the money to save them.
Up until 2007/8, MPs didn't have to provide receipts for items under £250. Back in 1994 it might have been even higher, if indeed there was any limit at all.
It certainly wasn't a working lunch. It just happened to be lunchtime and they wanted lunch, as people do.
While the amounts involved with MPs expenses might not add up to much in the great scheme of things, the issue is indicative of the character of MPs. Keep in mind that they fought hard to keep this information from the public, something they wouldn't have done if they knew they had nothing to hide.
Why then should they be trusted to deal with the bigger issues? If you ran a business and knew that an applicant for a job had been caught for fiddling their expenses, you wouldn't hire them, yet somehow it's supposed to be OK for people like that to run the country?
Not providing receipts is awesome. Wish I'd gone into politics.
As I've said before, our political system is broken, with people looking at it as a self-serving career, aiming to rise as far as they can before they step out into one or more high-paying private sector consulting positions. Often seeming to be with one or more companies who did well out of the politician's policies, if they were high-ranging enough to matter. That's why fiddling expenses doesn't come as a great surprise to me, nor do countless unprovable conspiracy theories regarding under-the-table deals.
People who seek power can never be trusted with it. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, anyone who is capable of getting themselves elected should on no account be allowed to do the job.
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