Letters From A Tory Daily views on British politics and the Conservative Party from a centre-right thinker who writes letters on his blog to politicians, journalists and many others.

From the Telegraph:
MPs have demanded the right to first class train travel in a move that threatens to reignite the expenses row. They say they need the perk in order to be able to work during journeys to and from Parliament. One MP even said he needed a first class seat because of his height.  [...]

“Having two homes is portrayed in the press as quite glamorous, but actually it’s quite a sweat.”
- Conservative MP Sir Michael Spicer, who – like Sir Nicholas Winterton – needs a reality check (preferably from voters with pitch forks).

“They are a totally different type of people.”
- retiring Conservative MP Sir Nicholas Winterton, explaining why he does not wish to travel in standard class as an MP.  Sir Nicholas, an MP since 1971, told BBC Radio 5 live that he had never received any complaints from constituents about travelling first class.  “Members of Parliament work extremely [...]

“If you want to see what whitewashed ermine looks like, this is it.  This ruling has more holes in it than a colander.”
- Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, on the ruling that peers could designate any property as their main home if they visited it just once a month

Dear Mark Thompson and Will Straw,
I read your joint blogpost last week on Mark Reckons and Left Foot Forward about whether the MPs with the safest seats are the worst expenses claimants with some interest.  The original suggestion of a link came several months ago on Mark’s blog and it certainly provoked discussion in various political channels.  However, on [...]

At 11am today, we will find out which of these six troughers will face prosecution (clockwise from top left: Lord Clarke of Hampstead, Baroness Uddin, Lord Hanningfield, Elliot Morley, David Chaytor, Jim Devine).  Rumour has it that three of them are in serious trouble while the others might escape, at least for now.  Add in [...]

“The authority and legitimacy of the fees office was much less than seems to have been realised by most MPs at the time. These officials were not civil servants with an independent duty to, and accountability for, the public purse. They were servants of the House and, while of course supposed to observe and apply [...]

“It is all very well him saying there should be restrictions on things like the amount MPs can spend on travel, when he was earning three times an MP’s salary and charging the taxpayer up to £70 a day for his personal travel arrangements.”
- Conservative MP Ian Liddell-Grainger, commenting after it was revealed by the Independent [...]

Dear Sir Thomas Legg,
A few months ago, I wrote to you complaining that the expenses crackdown had become a farce.  The legality of your actions was debatable, your retrospective imposition of laws was questionable and you missed out on some major expenses cheats through your box-ticking approach.  The news yesterday that a Liberal Democrat MP who was ordered by you to pay [...]

Dear Gordon Brown,
It wasn’t long after Kraft’s audacious takeover bid for Cadbury got the green light that the unions starting stomping their feet about potential job losses.  The deal ends more than more than 150 years of independence for the maker of Dairy Milk, which will now be subsumed within the world’s second-biggest food company.  [...]

Dear Harriet Harman,
After the thoroughly pointless Queen’s Speech just a few weeks back, it seems that you have already changed your mind about how to crackdown on dodgy expenses claims from MPs.  While the headlines today are all about belltowers, Sky TV, porn movies, domestic servants, garlic peelers, air beds and hamburger machines, the complete failure [...]

“I cannot think of a single year in the recent history of Parliament when more damage has been done to it than this year, with the possible exception of when Nazi bombs fell on the chamber in 1941″
- Commons Speaker John Bercow

“We in UKIP are anti the political class.”
- Lord Pearson of Rannoch, the new leader of UKIP, speaking in an interview over the weekend.  Yesterday, it was revealed that he claimed more than £100,000 in expenses on the basis that his £3.7 million house in London was his second home while also owning in a [...]

“This falls well short of what is required. It is a game of Monopoly – pass Go and collect £200.”
- Norman Baker, Lib Dem MP, reacting to the news that peers will receive a tax-free annual salary of nearly £30,000 on top of allowances worth £20,000 under reforms to be introduced following a series of [...]

“Only in a place as mad as Westminster can MPs make fat profits playing the property market with taxpayers’ money and get away with it.”
- Nick Clegg, responding to the letter he received from the Speaker John Bercow in which Bercow turned down his request to widen the scope of the audit of MPs expenses amid concerns [...]

Dear Sir Christopher Kelly,
After Sir Thomas Legg made a complete hash of approaching the issue of MP expenses a couple of weeks ago, I was hoping for something a bit more solid, respectable and effective from yourself.  Details of your report on reforming MP expenses have emerged after you discussed them in Parliament for the first [...]

Dear Gordon Brown,
You must be wondering what hit you.  No more than a few weeks ago, you were delivering one of your better conference speeches and rallying the Labour troops.  Now every day is a firefighting exercise over the expenses scandal and it threatens to get worse still.  Both yourself and David Cameron put yourself [...]

“The sad fact is that we MPs have nothing and no one to defend us. There is no National Union of Parliamentarians and Related Creeps”
- Labour backbencher Austin Mitchell

Dear Sir Thomas Legg,
While motivated by a combination of good intentions and public anger, it is clear that your crackdown on MP expenses is now descending into farce.  Although your demands have been far from unreasonable in the eyes of the public, it has been done in such a way as to undermine the entire [...]

Gordon Brown, Labour Party conference, 29th September 2009: “And just as I have said that the market needs morals I also say that politics needs morals too.  Let me say that the vast overwhelming majority of our Labour Members of Parliament are in Parliament not out of self interest but to serve the public interest. And our [...]

“I am standing down to spend more time with my family. It is a cliche, but it is true”
- MP Barbara Follett, who is standing down at the next general election.  For the record, her decision has nothing whatsoever to do with her £25,000 expenses claim for security patrols outside her home because she said she [...]

“It’s not easy to watch footage on the television news of a coffin draped in a Union Jack and then come in to work the next day and see on your computer screen what MPs are taking for themselves.”
- the mole for the MP expenses scandal, as reported in the Daily Telegraph – who are [...]

Dear Lord Mandelson,
Yesterday, I felt a mixture of disbelief and raging fury at your reaction to the MG Rover report.  In response to the news that the Phoenix Four had supposedly pocketed an “unreasonable” £42 million in pay and perks, you said ministers had been faultless.  You added: “We’ve not seen an ounce of humility [...]

Dear Alan Duncan,
As a visible member of Cameron’s team, you have placed a huge amount of pressure on him with your antics in recent months.  Finally, he has now caved in and ‘demoted’ you – which as far as I can see means sacking you in all but name.  What amazes me is not that [...]

Dear Mark France,
There have been plenty of high-profile casualties from the MP expenses scandal that tore through the Houses of Parliament just a few months ago.  Sadly, your idiocy has cost you your job as a civil servant as part of this saga as well. 
You have been sacked by managers at the Jobcentre in Bromsgrove [...]