Have you ever considered the fact that politicians, no matter what party only do anything to benefit the public when they have to?

If you look back to the national health system when Aneurin Bevan started it off in 1948 apart from the amount that was taken from your salary to fund the system everything else was free prescriptions were free spectacles were free and even the dental treatment was free. Since then bit by bit we have to pay what was going to be a free system.

This is happening because the politician tells us that we cannot afford to pay for everything out of taxes due to the medicines and treatments getting more complicated, therefore more expensive. I can’t see that there has been any reduction in things that benefit the politicians.

Such as reducing the House of Commons wine cellars, making them pay more towards what for, politeness we will say is the House of Commons canteen. There was only an attempt to restrict the MPs expenses when the Daily Telegraph reported the cost claimed for moats, and duck houses et cetera. Some time back, and I am talking about a few years I put forward the suggestion that one of the retired cruise liners should be moored on the Thames bank near the House of Commons, the idea was that they wouldn’t have to rent apartments because there were plenty of cabins, they could also utilise some of the cabins into their offices and there would also be the ships restaurant and cafeteria available. This would have led to a massive saving on expenses, which would have benefited the public purse and cut back on what MPs could claim in their expenses. The idea was not a popular one as you can imagine but the reason for not taking it up was that it would be a very easy target for terrorists. Believe that if you will.

If you look at the Register of Interests of our considerable number of MPs, you will find that the amounts of money they are receiving through outside activities is considerable, in some cases more than an MPs salary.

This then leads you to wonder what makes a person take up politics. Originally, it was for the sons of the landed gentry the older son inherited the estate the younger sons went into either the church or the Armed Forces. It was upon retiring from Armed Forces that they then took up politics. If you look back, there were quite a lot of MPs holding the rank of major. In those days the MPs did not draw a salary they had an income from elsewhere. Who was benefiting from them being an MP it certainly wasn’t the general public. You could only vote if you owned a property, in the old days not many people owned their own place, so there are only a few people who were entitled to vote. It was in 1918 that the vote was opened up to all males over 21. Women could vote if they were 30 or over, and even then only if they either owned property or had attended a top university. Then Emily Pankhurst started campaigning on women voting. It is my belief that the Russian Revolution was a major factor in all these changes.

I could keep going on this inequality, but that is all for now.

Maybe more later.