Actually maybe the government should have a collective Avios account.
Why is the Telegraph only concerned about a Labour peer’s expenses?
Ok so I do this trip on a regular basis and I don’t blame him for choosing to fly over the train. The prices are often cheaper and with strikes, leaves on the line, added travel time, over booked trains etc etc… many organisations are making the same choice every week!
I work in business travel and a few years was on an account which organised travel for ministers. The standard policy for travel within the UK was to always book the highest most flexible fare. So for example London – Edinburgh would be £500 for a full flexible ticket when there were £50-£100 fares available. Very loose with taxpayers money.
And how much was the helicopter rides that the PM used
Doesn’t matter the side – all these people need to be accountable.
As opposed to stealing hundreds of millions for useless PPE you mean?
Looking at the figures in the article it looks like this must have been over a very long time. One of the examples works out at around £150 a flight for business class which probably isn’t that much different to Virgin trains. You have to really hunt for details in the article, they seemed to go to some lengths to not provide any context.
Ooh look a Labour hit piece not behind a telegraph paywall!!!
If your first response to this is:
“But Whatabout…”
I think you’re missing the elephant in the room, that politicians in general are wasting our money.
Stop taking sides in a two party system, stand up to the fact that they are all doing this regardless of affiliation.
Imagine the amount of money if they’d taken the train…
Over what length of time? 20 years?
Typical “they are all the same” play by the telegraph
It’s obvious these news articles have been kept for an election year and demonstrate that both labour and Tory politicians are arseholes, but, does anyone think these arseholes are anything but arseholes?
Politicians should be accountable for this. Make an average of the cost of travel from A to B and make them stick to that budget, if they want any extras, they can pay from their pockets. Aren’t we nearly in a recession?
One of my friends worked for the home office. She told me how much they wasted on hotels in cities. I was staggered. They stayed at hotel for a few months in New York downtown all on taxpayers money. I wish all this information was transparent for the public.
As they say ‘What is good for gander is good for goose’. If my memory serves me right, Rishi Sunak flew for the doctor’s appointment.
They are quite vague on the time line of the £100k but they do say it was just under £20k 22-23
When they make the comparison with the Lib Dem peers expenses they also do a slightly unfair comparison as it’s a standard fare ticket.
As long as each of those flights he then worked as a peer then I really don’t see a problem with this. The article even says he has not broken any rules and is worded more like people should be outraged just because.
It’s the same lazy format as the recent alcohol spending story, as in a complete non story written to make people get frothing at the mouth with the headline.
Don’t panic – I’ll turn my heating down another degree to offset the CO2 emissions..
Conservatives have spent the last few years doing all they can to stop folks using the railway (refusing to negotiate to end strikes, cutting HS2, general lack of maintenance, etc.) whilst implementing tax cuts for domestic aviation. And now they’re annoyed that someone flies instead of getting the train? I thought that was their end goal!
I knew before I got to the comments that there would be people making excuses because he’s a Labour peer. It’s shit whether they wear a red or blue tie.
it’s not the first time someone in government has wasted tax payers cash, won’t be the last either
If these politicians were men of the people, they could proudly get on public transport and travel to work that way.
But they are not men of the people, hence they’d probably be beaten if they boarded a train without body guards.
In his most egregious year according to the telegraph he spent 19k (22 to 23) on flights. That’s £191 a week which if your traveling down to London once a week is reasonable, I’d like to see the dudes attendance but if it’s at least 52 times in the year then this really is a non story.
Edit; didn’t find that year but 2017-2018 it was 154 attendances and according to the whip website he votes on 40% of issues. So kinda of a meh story. The bigger problem is that we have too many Lords, it need to be half the size it is and to focus on filling it with people who are experts in a variety of subjects. Doctors, Scientists, long serving Civil servants or people who done real public service not people who donated the most or have been best mates with a PM.
This is Reddit where people would lose their shit at their corporate overlords if they had to travel often for work without having expenses paid
Why do we expect any different here?
And yet we are expected to trust Labour more then the tories according to some very completely competent people.
Can we now get the giant list of money spent by Tory peers since 2017? Nevermind Rishi Sunak.
26 comments
Actually maybe the government should have a collective Avios account.
Why is the Telegraph only concerned about a Labour peer’s expenses?
Ok so I do this trip on a regular basis and I don’t blame him for choosing to fly over the train. The prices are often cheaper and with strikes, leaves on the line, added travel time, over booked trains etc etc… many organisations are making the same choice every week!
I work in business travel and a few years was on an account which organised travel for ministers. The standard policy for travel within the UK was to always book the highest most flexible fare. So for example London – Edinburgh would be £500 for a full flexible ticket when there were £50-£100 fares available. Very loose with taxpayers money.
And how much was the helicopter rides that the PM used
Doesn’t matter the side – all these people need to be accountable.
As opposed to stealing hundreds of millions for useless PPE you mean?
Looking at the figures in the article it looks like this must have been over a very long time. One of the examples works out at around £150 a flight for business class which probably isn’t that much different to Virgin trains. You have to really hunt for details in the article, they seemed to go to some lengths to not provide any context.
Ooh look a Labour hit piece not behind a telegraph paywall!!!
If your first response to this is:
“But Whatabout…”
I think you’re missing the elephant in the room, that politicians in general are wasting our money.
Stop taking sides in a two party system, stand up to the fact that they are all doing this regardless of affiliation.
Imagine the amount of money if they’d taken the train…
Over what length of time? 20 years?
Typical “they are all the same” play by the telegraph
It’s obvious these news articles have been kept for an election year and demonstrate that both labour and Tory politicians are arseholes, but, does anyone think these arseholes are anything but arseholes?
Politicians should be accountable for this. Make an average of the cost of travel from A to B and make them stick to that budget, if they want any extras, they can pay from their pockets. Aren’t we nearly in a recession?
One of my friends worked for the home office. She told me how much they wasted on hotels in cities. I was staggered. They stayed at hotel for a few months in New York downtown all on taxpayers money. I wish all this information was transparent for the public.
As they say ‘What is good for gander is good for goose’. If my memory serves me right, Rishi Sunak flew for the doctor’s appointment.
They are quite vague on the time line of the £100k but they do say it was just under £20k 22-23
When they make the comparison with the Lib Dem peers expenses they also do a slightly unfair comparison as it’s a standard fare ticket.
As long as each of those flights he then worked as a peer then I really don’t see a problem with this. The article even says he has not broken any rules and is worded more like people should be outraged just because.
It’s the same lazy format as the recent alcohol spending story, as in a complete non story written to make people get frothing at the mouth with the headline.
Don’t panic – I’ll turn my heating down another degree to offset the CO2 emissions..
Conservatives have spent the last few years doing all they can to stop folks using the railway (refusing to negotiate to end strikes, cutting HS2, general lack of maintenance, etc.) whilst implementing tax cuts for domestic aviation. And now they’re annoyed that someone flies instead of getting the train? I thought that was their end goal!
I knew before I got to the comments that there would be people making excuses because he’s a Labour peer. It’s shit whether they wear a red or blue tie.
it’s not the first time someone in government has wasted tax payers cash, won’t be the last either
If these politicians were men of the people, they could proudly get on public transport and travel to work that way.
But they are not men of the people, hence they’d probably be beaten if they boarded a train without body guards.
In his most egregious year according to the telegraph he spent 19k (22 to 23) on flights. That’s £191 a week which if your traveling down to London once a week is reasonable, I’d like to see the dudes attendance but if it’s at least 52 times in the year then this really is a non story.
Edit; didn’t find that year but 2017-2018 it was 154 attendances and according to the whip website he votes on 40% of issues. So kinda of a meh story. The bigger problem is that we have too many Lords, it need to be half the size it is and to focus on filling it with people who are experts in a variety of subjects. Doctors, Scientists, long serving Civil servants or people who done real public service not people who donated the most or have been best mates with a PM.
This is Reddit where people would lose their shit at their corporate overlords if they had to travel often for work without having expenses paid
Why do we expect any different here?
And yet we are expected to trust Labour more then the tories according to some very completely competent people.
Can we now get the giant list of money spent by Tory peers since 2017? Nevermind Rishi Sunak.