I’ve just spotted Stephen Fry talking a load of arse, poo and widdle (bollocks, in other words) about the issue of MPs’ expenses on Newsnight (video clip here).
According to Fry, MPs doing things like claiming £2,000 of public money to have the moats of their manor houses cleaned (Douglas Hogg), or £35,000 for a “second home” in London that’s five minutes’ walk from the first, or £1,700 in a year on televisions and video recorders (Hazel Blears) is OK.
I’ve cheated expenses, you have.
he tells Michael Crick. Erm, actually Stephen, I haven’t. And most people I know haven’t either because in many cases they don’t have an expense account (let alone one running to thousands of pounds) and, unlike MPs, they know that if they get caught they’ll get fired.
He attacks journalists, claiming they are
a venal and disgusting crowd of people when it comes to expenses and allowances.
Well, perhaps twenty years ago that rather lame cliché might have rung true but in fact being a journalist these days often doesn’t entail many perks. (I recently had a claim for a £2.50 train ticket turned down because I forgot to staple the receipt to the form.) Even if we accept the argument that unscrupulous journalists are an evil bunch of expense account abusers, the crucial difference is that unless they work for the BBC, the money they are wasting doesn’t come from the public purse.
Stephen is a man with a wonderful vocabulary. But he also strikes me as someone who loves the sound of his own plummy voice. Thus he goes on:
Let’s not confuse what politicians get really wrong like wars, things where people die, with the rather tedious bourgeois obsession with whether or not they’ve charged for their wisteria. It’s not that important, it really isn’t… it’s a journalistic made-up frenzy.
He really does say this. Honestly, he does. So perhaps it’s worth reminding ourselves about the MPs who claimed for a £2,000 repair to his tennis court (Oliver Letwin) and £510 to stay in a hotel for one night (Michael Gove). Presumably Fry thinks none of this matters – and anyone who does is simply being “bourgeois”.
The argument that MPs’ expenses are irrelevant in the context of wars and other more serious stuff makes as much sense as saying we shouldn’t care if someone dumps an empty fridge and a dustbin full of raw sewage (or “poo and widdle”, in Fryspeak) on our front lawn because, hey, global warming is much more of a concern.
The Conversation {15 comments}
Agree totally with the above. The crucial difference between a journalist or Stephen Fry “fiddling” their expenses and a MP doing it is that in the latter case it is public money. It shows that these MPs think it’s acceptable to steal from the very people who they are there to serve and who voted for them in the first place.
Agree. Fry’s wrong to see this an an insignificant issue – it further dents the public confidence of our whole Parliamentary system. However, the story is a little “manufactured” in the sense that Private Eye, Mark Thomas and others have been telling us all this stuff for years – but the fact it’s now become a big media story means that perhaps finally we’ll get some change and transparency in the system. I’m cautiously optimistic. Oh, and while it might be different for the big-name celebrity columnists with whom Fry mixes, as a sometime journalist I can confirm that for most of us, even trying to get a £5 cab fare paid requires video evidence, date-stamped and signed in triplicate, and will probably only be okayed by penny-pinching publishers if you can also prove no buses were running at the time.
There talks a silly man. Why are we giving him air-time?
unfortunately you have to listen to someone to hear what they say, something we haven’t time for, fortunately we now have a media willing to do that and then tell us what to think. for anyone who wants to listen again, mr fry never once supported the mp’s or fiddling, he merely suggests in the scheme of things fiddling expenses is less important than people dying. feel free to agree and/or disagree with him, we live in a democracy, so you can, another point he tried to make, but i fear to no avail.
I can’t believe Stephen Fry has said this. How out of touch can you get? As for its being ‘bourgeois’ to care about MPs’ expenses I thought I was listening to some louche bright-young-thing from the pages of ‘Brideshead Revisited’ than Britain’s Cleverest Man. I’m just surprised he didn’t give the ‘peanut-monkeys’ analogy which is so insulting to 90% of the population!
You are way off beam on this one, Mr Fry.
Mr Fry made a very sensible argument for getting the question of MP’s expenses in perspective. Democracy matters, and politics matters, and there are much more important things in politics than freeloading. Let’s not undermine democracy.
A right-wing paper that hates Labour and isn’t too keen on the Cameron version of the Conservatives is trying to persuade us all that the present Parliament is rotten beyond the standards of all others. It isn’t. Most MPs seem to have claimed within the rules, not fiddled.
MPs always had this benefit, but it’s only because of the Freedom of Information Act that we know about it now. This is a good thing.
It means that the voters now know that the rules were ridiculously lenient, and the voters can decide what to do sbout that, but it doesn’t mean that our elected politicians are corrupt.
What’s more impotent? £2000 or a single innocent life? That’s his point. Look at the papers. Get some perspective.
To think I admired you Mr Fry! No longer. Your acceptance of MP’s exorbitant claims has shocked me. I regarded you as a very intelligent, very erudite man.
Do pardon me for being a member of the class that is now mocked in modern Britain: semi-middle . . . I care for the elderly, I care for the mentally ill. Funding for them is scarce. How CAN you forgive highly paid MP’s for pocketing tax payer’s money?
I guess you will have seen the interview on BBC News Channel with Lord Foulkes in which Carrie Gracie admits that her salary is £92,000. Given that journalists are clearly not generally living on the bread-line isn’t it a bit petty – perhaps even venial – to make a travel claim for just £2.50?
“The crucial difference between a journalist or Stephen Fry “fiddling” their expenses and a MP doing it is that in the latter case it is public money”
How exactly do you think money works? If an MP charges £10 to buy some stationary for personal use, it hits the taxpayer and we all have to pay for it, but if I steal the same value of stationary from my office for personal use, somehow that cost vanishes into thin air?
Of course not. If you steal from a corporation, their costs go up, so they either charge more for their product/service, or pay lower wages to make up the gap.
I’m glad Stephen has diverged the important ‘life and death’ political issues from the mundane ‘fake mortgage’ ones.
He won’t mind his new 50% tax bracket then.
Surely we need complete trust in those responsible for the kind of decisions which may mean life or death.
Mr Fry admitted to fiddling his own expenses. I wonder if he was contracted to the BBC, another body paid for by the public. Perhaps this should also be investigated.
His tongue is silver due to the spoon which should be reinserted elsewhere!
There talks a silly man. Why are we giving him air-time?
I’m so glad to see someone hasn’t lost perspective.
Mr Fry is the voice of reason in this whole media furore encited by the Torygraph’s picnmix expose.
Like many many people, For ten years I have been priced out of the housing market.
We now know there was NEVER any political WILL under Labour for an average person to be able to afford an average house.
Why?
Because Politicians were flipping homes for profits. They were in fact all property speculators. Buying, then selling, in a rising market and making tens, or hundreds of thousands in profit.
[My own MP had her daughter buy a Westminster Flat, then rent it to her mother, selling it after a couple of years for over a £200k profit.] Thats what I want paying back. Not the few hundred quid for gardening etc.
All these homebuy type schemes were never created to help FTB. It was all a lie.
And the consequences have been Downright Evil.
There was never any intention to help normal hardworking people get onto the housing ladder.
It was always in Labours best interests to keep house prices high. For personal profit.
FOR PERSONAL PROFIT!
They were flipping houses. These are the true effects of the expenses system. Normal hardworking people forced to rent for a decade. Wasted tens of thousands of pounds. All because we did not get onto the housing ladder around 1999.
Our public servants, should not enter office, to make themselves rich.
That’s what Fry does not understand. In his plummy @rsey Ivory tower.
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