Jenny Mclarney 2 - Best Satirical Contributor - Vision

COMMENT

YORK VISION

Wednesday May 27th, 2009

9

Will the expenses scandal finally awaken the pirate in YUSU President Tom Scott?

Expenses: should we really care? PETER SUTTON T

hat students love to protest is a self evident fact of life. Very recently we’ve seen protests on campus against the BNP, University investment in the arms trade and, were I to be writing this article back in 2003, we’d be seeing huge student protests at the irresponsible and disastrous decision to invade Iraq. These are all, to varying degrees, big and pressing issues. So let’s keep some sort of perspective on what’s gone on. The economy is in freefall, Britain is involved in two increasingly impossible wars, we’re facing an election in two weeks when a BNP MEP is a distinct possibility and people are talking about ‘punishing’ the parties that would prevent it from happening. I could go on. However, all we can talk about is which non-entity backbencher has claimed for hob knobs. Politicians can get things very wrong - let’s not lose sight of what those things really are. Just as the taxpayer pays for MPs’ expenses, they pay for the various grants, bursaries and loans that we students receive. Amongst the items that I’ve used my taxpayer gifted money on this week include two crates of Calsberg, clothes from H&M (although they were substantially reduced if the press ask me to justify it) a Bob Dylan CD, entry to Tru and an Efes takeaway. I’m off out to Leeds tomorrow and reckon my conscience will just about stretch to it. I’d probably put a moat around my flat if I could afford it. Actually, looking around the kitchen now, I can see a bottle of Cointreau, Finlandia Vodka, a crate of Blackthorn (urgh!) and a Cliff Richard calendar (double urgh!).

NO

Not a text book or essay in sight. It’s a good life. When it comes to really fiddling expenses, no one’s perfect. Journalists are notorious for outrageous expenses cons and no doubt a lot of those acting so sanctimoniously at the moment have been guilty of the very things they condemn. One close friend of mine at school claimed EMA allowance and used it to pay for surgical adjustment to two buck teeth. Nice if you can afford it but unless the government introduced ‘Educational Teeth Whitening and Straightening Allowance’ without me realising then it doesn’t seem exactly what the money was supposed to be used for. Another, who actually falsely claimed off one income, put the whole lot into paying for driving lessons. Inventive use of public money isn’t just confined to Westminster. I don’t deny that there have been some seriously dishonest, even fraudulent, claims, but they are a minority. Most of what has emerged is at worst an example of over claiming and at times appears to be featured on the grounds of selling papers and making a non story run for a couple more weeks, regardless of whether the MP is guilty of anything at all. Consequently, we need to be able to see the wood from the trees. Claims for moats, tennis courts, and swimming pools should never have been made but do they really warrant being front page headlines for the best part of two weeks? The whole thing smacks of rummaging through bins. So when you decide whether or not to vote on June 4th, remember the economic recession, the thousands of businesses going to the wall, the two wars being fought, and don’t give this media driven, semi fictional frenzy anymore credence than it deserves.

YES F

or the majority of students, managing our finances is a skill that has had to be learned very quickly. At the start of every term, the minus sign in my bank statement makes away for a four-figure sum kindly deposited by the government in order for me to live a comfortable life whilst I complete my studies. The temptation to spend this money is overwhelming, but the pleasure of contacting daddy to replace the cash you have just spent on a Jack Wills hat worth more than a weekly-shop is not available to most. Beans, sadly, must come before Beret’s. What has emerged most saliently from the expenses controversy has been a distinct absence of this kind of self-discipline. That all the main political parties have called for the rules on expenses to be amended shows not that they recognise they have done wrong but that their claims are down to a set of rules they couldn’t help but blindly abide by. Where is the self-control? Where is that ounce of self-judgement that asks do I really need to do this? Students on a tight budget cannot afford such an absence of self-governing, managing our money is something that cannot be taken light heartedly. And it is precisely because of those politicians, who we have seen wheeled out onto a host of news stations to pathetically justify their actions, that we must be so prudent with our cash. For it is they who voted that we should pay so much for our university education and it is they who continue to debate whether or not to increase it. That ‘everybody’ fiddles expenses is not a reason to ignore or blur this issue. The businessman claiming for his extravagant nights out or the journalist falsely declaring reimbursement for

DANIEL HEWITT his travelling costs is of no interest to me. They will eventually be caught and pay the consequences for their lies, at no cost to me, and though I indeed currently contribute nothing to the wages and expenses of politicians, I do have to work my way through a forty-eight page form every year declaring what my parents earn, whether they pay for private health insurance, how much tax they pay, in order to claim a bit more money to pay for my extortionate rent. Some politicians have claimed on second homes when they live closer to Westminster that some of us live to campus. That wars are being fought and that the economy is in such a bad way is precisely why we should care so much about this issue, for it is the people caught who up in this scandal that hold such a key influence in determining the success and failures of wars and economies. It is thus essential that newspapers continue to discover every excessive or ludicrous claim made by politicians, from mars bars to moats. The machinations of Westminster are on the whole mind-numbing affairs, enjoyed only by academics and certain Politics students who can cite the birth date of every Prime Minister since Disraeli whilst simultaneously masturbating into the diaries of Alistair Campbell. The issue of expenses however has revealed MPs not to be boring, but to be bastards, with Westminster being spiced up only by scandal and not legislation designed help people during an extremely difficult time.