Let’s talk about… our MP expenses.

April 18, 2022

7 minutes read

S247’s Facebook profile is closely watched and constantly attacked by internet trolls. I am used to it. So are the readers of S247, who very sensibly ignore their taunts and do not enter into discussions with them. I also try not to interact with them, but at the same time- I look closely at their activities. Someone wise once said: do not disturb the opponent when he makes a mistake. This saying applies perfectly to the situation I will describe today.

I’LL BE BACK – SAID THE GUY LOOKING LIKE A TROLL.
The trolls are back. For a while, they were harassing me with claims that I wanted to close(?!?) the Leisure Centre, but since I showed that it was the Labour Party that wanted to shut down the LC (back in 2012) while showing the Byzantine expenses of the place – the trolls have let it go and crawled back into their caves. Probably to regroup and develop a new topic to attack me with. There was peace for a while, but it did not last long.

Their tactic has not changed- divert attention from the problem described in the article at all costs. So instead of about the article, the troll started dwelling on our MP’s expenses. He accused me of bias because I never wrote about it, and according to him, MP Mark Fletcher is a big spender of taxpayer money.

Let’s face it: the MP is human too. Someday he will eventually make a mistake. There is no avoiding that. Left-wing trolls have accused me of not addressing this issue because I am “fake and biased”. I am not. When something difficult needs to be written about- I will write about it. This article is the proof. So… let’s talk about our MP’s spending.

Shirebrook pays the largest taxes in the District. Shirebrook has the largest Council employee payroll expenditure in the District. Shirebrook Council has the highest operating costs among all parish councils in the District. Shirebrook District councillors receive the largest allowance in the UK (in rural councils). Does our MP fit into this picture and cost residents the most in the area? I was so disappointed when the troll suggested that. I couldn’t believe that our MP would do something like that, but since it’s my role to report things important to residents of Shirebrook, I decided to sit down, research the issue and write an article about it.

CHECK IT OUT! IT’S SO EASY!
So I started snooping around for sources that publish information on MP spending. I found a few interesting websites on the subject and pulled out some interesting facts, graphs, totals, tables – everything that tigers like the most. It took me a lot of time to go through all this data and prepare this article, but if readers want to play around and check things out for themselves, I attached links to the best sites at the end of the article.

EVERY PICTURE NEED A BACKGROUND
Before we get into the painful details about the spending of our MP- a few sentences and pictures to set the background. I thought that the best way to assess our MP’s spending is to compare him with currently serving MPs from neighbouring areas. MP Mark Fletcher has seven such “neighbours”. Six Conservatives and one Labour- so the comparison will not only be with party colleagues but also with someone representing socialists.

IS HE HERE? IS HE THERE? I CAN’T FIND HIM ANYWHERE!
Now it is time to look for our MP’s name in the vast amount of data I have looked at. If someone accuses MP Mark Fletcher of spending huge amounts of money, then why is his name not on the list of the BIGGEST bills paid? I have checked all accounting periods. Our MP’s name did not appear even ONCE.

It’s funny that red roses are so expensive. They took almost the whole list. One MP has a strange white letter “i” on grey background. It’s our old “friend”! Mordor MP- Jeremy Corbyn! Oh, wait! Since he has “i” in the logo- is that mean that he is Isengard MP? Ok. Enough. Jokes aside…

Oh, painful is the fall of the fallen leader. He won the argument, and what did he get out of it? In showing you this picture, am I not at the same time painting a beautiful metaphor of the socialism promoted by the caviar leftist elites of the big cities in the UK? No. It was the life that painted that picture.

A socialist, so-called working-class representative who hasn’t worked a day outside politics in his adult career– is footing such a massive bill for the taxpayer. Moral decline and decay are the backbones of today’s left, and Corbyn and his cohorts are only proving it.

DO YOU HAVE MORE OF THOSE…STATS?
If our MP really does spend that much as the troll claims, then I can reassure readers that his party colleagues can save money. Below you can see the list of MPs who have registered the least spending. The “defenders of the working class” will surely want to show that they can be an example to those currently in power, that they can be cheap – after all, that was one of the arguments they raised in the election campaign. How many Labour can we see among the most frugal?

This list is shocking even to me. I had assumed that the Conservatives would be better handlers of money. I had hoped that the Tories would be in the majority on this list, but I did not expect such dominance. In every accounting period, I checked- the situation was similar. The Tories took most or at least half of the list in “lowest spenders” and minority or none in “highest spenders”. On the other side, Labour, as usual, is living beyond their means at the taxpayer’s expense.

Thrift is one of the ideals of true Conservatism that I personally adhere to. So it is no surprise that it is among Conservatives that you find the most thrifty MP’s. However, the scale of the advantage over other political parties is shocking. Note the absence of National Socialists from the SNP, not a single MP from Northern Ireland or LibDem. Shock and disbelief!

ENOUGH OF THIS BEATING ABOUT THE BUSH!
I think at this point, the background has been drawn quite well. So it’s time to focus on what I’m supposedly afraid to talk about: it’s time to re-examine our MP’s expenses. I compiled all data and created the table below that shows the total operating cost of each MP in our area since the start of the 2019/2020 fiscal year in which the last general election was held.

YOU GOTTA PUMP THOSE NUMBERS!
The title of this paragraph is a quote from a well-known film about boundless greed. The Labour MP who registered the most significant expenditure in our region has adopted this saying as his life motto. No surprise there- he is Labour. The only one in the neighbourhood and still- most expensive… how telling…

However, I must reiterate that the table presented contains two separate “types” of MPs– the top part is the MPs who held office before the historic December 2019 election and won again. The bottom part is the new MPs who won their first election in December 2019. Hence, the “old” MPs have 12 months of spending in the 2019/2020 accounting period and the “new” MPs have only five months.

If one were to make a separate list comparing only the spending of the “new” MPs in their first accounting period, our MP would not be in the first place, but he would be in the penultimate place! Second from the bottom! If you add up the spending of the “new” MPs from the first year and the second year- our MP would still not be the one who spent the most. So, what was this troll about?

BuT WhAaAT AbOuT DeNnIs SkInNeR??
Literally: there is no such period, no such list, in which MP Mark Fletcher tops the list of those who have spent the most. If anyone would like me to compare the expenditure of our current MP with our previous MP, I have only this to say to them: our previous MP had no office, no social media presence, no website of his own, no printing or distribution of leaflets outside the election period. He did nothing!

Volunteers distributed his election leaflets while he travelled like a celebrity from studio to studio, giving interviews. Tokenboy of the working class- didn’t work a real job in 40 years. Exactly like his hero- Jeremy Corbyn. I cannot comment on his activities before 2013- but since I moved here: our MP was like a ghost of a bygone era. An era when there was no internet and people voted Labour reflexively and without the slightest consideration of what Dennis Skinner really did for our District.

Denis Skinner lost not because his party had a hopeless approach to Brexit. Our previous MP lost because he simply did nothing in recent years and people NOTICED IT. If you do nothing- you don’t spend money, so comparing the current MP with the previous one is like comparing a modern flagship smartphone with a phone from the 1980s.

SECOND PLACE IS THE FIRST LOSER.
I guess, dear reader, that you have also noticed who is in the second place on the above list. The MP from the Mordor constituency is not in our neighbourhood, but I decided to track and compare his spending for a laugh and see if his actions follow his words. They don’t. The caviar lefties like to spend taxpayer money. I used the title of this paragraph on purpose- to underline the fall of Corbyn and the moral bankruptcy of his ideology.

LAST SCREENSHOT TO UNDERLINE THE TONE
I speak without a shadow of sarcasm: Conservatives occupy the bottom of the table of the highest spending MPs. If this table were the table of some football league – our MP would be in danger of being relegated to a lower league. If this article were about the least spending MPs, his position would give him hope of fighting for promotion. However, I hope he won’t “pump up those numbers”. Instead, I hope he will keep his spending in the “average” region.

Our MP is at the bottom of the table most spending MPs. What more can I add? Perhaps just a table I found in one of the articles comparing the spending of “ordinary” MPs of both major parties and the amount of average claim (this stat excludes ministers and shadow ministers). Could there be a surprise here?