Fancy £10,000 pa to spend on promoting your blog?

Yes, that's right - you can receive £10,000 each year to promote your blog and tell all your readers what you've been up to!

Sounds too good to be true? That's because it is - unless you happen to be an MP, that is. They call it the Annual Communications Allowance, and David Cameron - for all he's a Tory and therefore to be detested - has actually spoken through his mouth instead of his more customary arsehole and called for it to be scrapped.

The allowance is for ministers to spend on regular reports to their constituents, newsletters, targeted correspondence, adverts listing surgery details, costs of publishing, printing, distribution of literature, the creation and maintenance of websites (obviously they've never heard of Blogger), purchase and/or leasing of equipment required to carry out the above and Freepost facilities. They can either pay the money themselves and the Parliamentary Department of Finance and Administration refunds it, or the Department will pay the money directly to whoever it is owed. Which means, of course, that the tax-payer pays it.

You know all that crap that comes through your letterbox just before a
local/national election? Guess who pays for it all? Yep - you do. Bet you
won't be so quick to line Fluffy's littertray with it in future, eh?

Not bad, on top of the £64,776 basic salary thay already get per year, is it? And that right there is the problem - if they earn that much already, why do we have to pay for all the rest? We should pay them a basic annual salary and the rest should be up to them.

Why do they need ten grand a year to tell us about how wonderful they are and what great things they've been doing? Actions speak louder than words. If an MP fucks up, we bear the brunt of their actions and don't vote them back into power. If they do well, we benefit, are pleased with their performance and then we do vote them back into power. Simples, as that meerkat would say.