I'm the Hen Ferchetan. This is my take on the world through the eyes of Wales. While mostly about Welsh politics (that most famous of dour topics!) I try to scatter some humour around, but I doubt anyone but me will find it funny! Have a read, and if it bores you then feel free to never come back!

Wednesday 15 October 2008

Give Me a H!

So True Wales have decided that one line of attack they will use to make people vote "No" is to remind us voter about all those AM's with their snouts in the trough spending all those expenses. It could prove an useful argument for them, after all what voter wants to see their money being used to fund someones excessive second home, food and hotel expenditure?

It could be worse you know. Imagine if those AM's claimed 5 times more expenses than they currently do! Sound insane? Well it is possible, all they need to do is change to a very similar job in London. If they want advice about how to do so, then I know who they can ask...

Average AM Expenses Claim inc Travel: £6,682.73
Maximum Expenses Claim inc Travel Made by any AM: £12,500
True Wales Founder David Davies MP Expenses Claim inc Travel: £33,375

% of AM's claiming more than 99% of the maximum allowance: 16%
% of maximum allowance claimed by True Wales Founder David Davies MP: 99.96%

Can I hear someone saying "hypocrite"?

(David Davies MP Expenses figures from here)

9 comments:

Che Grav-ara said...

The facts tell a different story to David! Great post hen

Anonymous said...

Yes, good post. These fuckers are going to lie their way to the end, so it's worth getting the facts out straight away and making sure they reach the papers in the form of letters.

Robert said...

And of course if you had a job with expenses you would not claim as much as you could, no hen I would not. bull shit.

Simple cut the expences.

Hen Ferchetan said...

I'm not the one accusing the AM's of feasting on expenses when my expenses are 5 times worse Robert.

I agree though, cut the expenses, especialy for MP's.

Unknown said...

@Robert: we're not saying expenses are wrong. If you work in the commercial sector, and get expenses, great!

The problem comes when politicians are telling us there is no money in the kitty, then dipping into it for luxuries and such. It's setting a bad example. If your commercial business was in the red, and you were going under, you would stop expenses and cut back. Why can't politicians do that? Who pays their expenses anyway? We do.

Unknown said...

And lets not forget that one of the quiet men behind the scenes of True Wales - the man with his hand up the back of Dave 'Quisling' Ress - is none other than Don Touhig, who last year supplemented his 61k salary with 142k in expenses, and made a 200K windfall profit on selling his London flat which was paid for by the taxpayers. The trough is much deeper at Westminster than Cardiff Bay and the Snouts more excercised.

Unknown said...

So the next time one of these weasels starts on about the cost of an AM, remind them that one MP costs 4 times as much as one AM. Give us 20 more AMs, and fund them by scrapping 5 MPs. Better still get rid of 20 MPs and put the money saved into worthy causes, like the Gwent home for rehabilitation of political dinosaurs

Anonymous said...

Actually, the lazy sods in the assembly only work two days a week. Most MPs work 4 in Westminster and do at least another two in the constituency. The assembly members are also on holiday now - five minutes after they went back in September. It's fairly obvious who works harder.

Hen Ferchetan said...

Just making facts up now are we anon? Do you honestly believe that AM's work two days a week?

As you are so rightly able to point out when it comes to MP's, a politician's work includes his constiuency as well as London/Cardiff, funny how you forgot to add that to the AM's work. And they sit for more than two days anyway.

By the way, have you even looked at BBC parliament on any day apart from Wednesday? Believe me, the number of days Parliament/Assembly is actually sitting has nothing to do with how much work they do.