Tuesday 20 January 2009

Concealment

I've joined the I object to MPs concealing their expenses over on Facebook. There was a load of fuss about MP's concealing their expenses against Freedom of Information requests a few months back, it went to the high court or something and the law told MPs to stop being assholes. Briefly 'the public' thought they were goingto find out how much of our month each MP spends and on what, but the other day when the government announced the third Heathrow runway, they sneaked out changes to the Freedom of Information law.

£1600 for window cleaning and £1920 for plants indeed.

So here's a wee graph of the membership of the Facebook group over time. Tom Steinburg from MySociety, who's running the show, reckons that if they get more than ten thousand members, the story will get more news coverage and maybe MPs will figure out how much public opinion goes against them. Its funny how these things work.

Since he sent out a Facebook message urging people to sign up to the group, the membership has rocketed by about 300 an hour, so getting 10,000 before Thursday's vote should be achieveable. But to really get in the news on Thursday morning, its going to have to happen sometime tomorrow morning.

So if you're reading this, and you're in the UK and on Facebook, then join up to the group there, and then send out invitey things to anyone you think might be slightly interested.

**UPDATE**
List of MPs who've pledged to vote against the government's order or have signed Jo Swinson's EDM:
Alexander, Danny
Barrett, John
Bottomley, Peter
Burrowes, David (Enfield Southgate)
Burstow, Paul
Carswell, Douglas
Corbyn, Jeremy (Islington North)
Davies, Dai
Davies, Philip
Davey, Edward
Drew, David
Farron, Timothy
Field, Frank (Birkenhead)
Fisher, Mark
George, Andrew
Harris, Evan
Harvey, Nick (North Devon)
Hoey, Kate
Hopkins, Kelvin
Horwood, Martin (Cheltenham)
Hunter, Mark
Jones, Lynne
Key, Robert
Lancaster, Mark
Leech, John
Loughton, Tim
Moore, Michael
Redwood, John
Rennie, Willie
Russell, Bob
Sanders, Adrian
Schapps, Grant
Shepherd, Richard
Stunell, Andrew
Swinson, Jo
Watkinson, Angela (Havering)
Webb, Steve
Wiggin, Bill
Willis, Phil
Winnick, David
Thats 40 MPs, 6% of the total

2 comments:

  1. alternatively, you could just write to your MP?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Aye, but its Glenda Jackson, and she usually votes 'strongly for' transparent government.

    ReplyDelete