Anti-waste campaigner to stand against Davis

Pleased Perry

Yup!

Hats off to DD!!

Things are on the move. The Beloved and Supreme Leader, the weird Commissar of Noo-Boring-Liars will have to act to suppress this, and quick!

Can’t have free thinking can we?

Searcher

"an interesting insight into what really matters to British voters just as Davis intended." Well, not exactly. Surely David Davis hopes to show that the electorate are most concerned about civil liberties. It would be rather a misfire for him if it turns out that they are most concerned about Government waste. Or a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

C Powell

I'd be interested to know whether this individual would claim all the allowances, whether he would provide a receipt, whether he would buy a 2nd home in London and if so would he keep the profit made when it's sold even though it's paid for with taxpayers' money etc etc since it is the allowances where the abuse lies not in the salary. If he's focusing only on salary he's missing the point and/or being disingenuous. Plus the other issues raised by DD will affect people e.g. the cost of ID cards, making it a criminal offence not to tell the govt every time you move home, having local officials spy on your bins, giving them the right to get hold of your emails or to walk into your house to see what home improvements you've done in order to tax you etc. DD needs to focus on these as well because we are all affected by these matters. There is a bigger point too: namely, that the focus on 42-day detention which even the Govt has admitted will only be used sparingly is a distraction from the detailed day-to-day work needed to defeat the terrorists, about which we hear nothing from the Govt because they're too busy making "look at me" gestures in Parliament. Gesture laws do not amount to a strategy to defeat terrorism. What else are the Govt doing? Are they doing anything?

Michael

I'm pleased he is standing. I recommend all Coffee House readers vist the public accounts committee website to review the performance of our incontinent public services. It is a source of constant woe. did anybody know for instance that New Deal for Partners cost £76,450 per job entry? However, it would be preferable if the campaign was against a Labour candidate. Two months ago I visited Portcullis House in Westminster - it seemed an obscenely self-regarding and wastful palce. Can the Tories be trusted with the public finances?.

Pete

So far, this election is about an attack on our liberties, being denied a democratic referendum on Lisbon and now the issue of our greedy, overpaid and wasteful MP's.

Brilliant, what politics should be about.

Davis really has lifted the lid on something.

TrevorH

And how if elected would this person be able tom properly represent his constituents if he impoverishes himself?

He cannot commute from Humberside to Westminster each day, he will have to pay for digs/2nd home secretary etc - so whats his beef?

He may have a worthy ideal but is he competent to be an MP? His attitude implies that only self made already wealthy people could become an MP. Its pretty pathetic really.

Nick

Some one should stand (actually DD should be standing) on the "we want a referendum" ticket.

fleety3000

The majority of the 47.5% of Conservative voters who voted for Davis in 2005 will vote the same, mainly because they know and like him and because they wont want to do anything to upset the Tory's chances in 2 years.
The majority of the 36% of LD's are going to vote for Davis because they overwhelmingly agree with him on this issue.
And the 12% who voted Labour are too insignificant to challenge that daunting coalition.
Though the electoral result wont be too important hopefully the debate will.

Mike Wood

Is it legal?
Making any financial offer or gift "to or for any person in order to induce that person to procure, or endeavour to procure, the return of any person at an election or the vote of any voter" counts as bribery.
Presumably nominating a candidate counts as endeavouring to procure the return of a candidate.

Kevyn Bodman

MPs should have a good salary and adqequate expenses.

Pay for MPs was one of the Chartists' demands 170 years ago.It was right then, it's still right.
What/who would you get in the House of Commons if salaries were cut in half?
Expenses are also necessary, let's just have transparency.
But to suggest a blanket reduction wouldn't do much good, and is more than a little naive.
It's a small example of a widespread mistaken analysis; we do not need more laws or regulations, we need proper enforcement of the ones we've got.

Hysteria

When will the media run the(another?) main issue here - that DD appears to have the vast majority of support (based on my reading of the blogosphere) but is derided as "mad" (etc.) by the media. The disconnect between what the people think and what Parliament Village thinks is, in itself, a major issue in my view.

The deriding of his stand by the media and politicians is exactly the same process as is going on post the Irish referendum result - "we know best"....

It also plays to GB's views on Britishness - what DD has done is quintessentially British!!!

Oh - is that right it will be a criminal offence to not report a change of address post ID cards? If true I fear I will have a criminal record pretty soon - just on principle I will not do that!

Where can I send a cheque to DD's campaign.?

Liz Brown

Why doesn't Mr Craig stand on the same ticket as DD - we all want more freedom from being spied on etc to having less of our money stolen by this egregious Government and natch they must both campaign for a referendum on Europe

C Powell

Hysteria: yes - it is the case. The ID cards scam is all about forcing us to provide all manner of personal information to the Government (so that's our privacy gone) thus giving them an opportunity to tax / fine us. Those who think it's about catching terrorists are living in La-La-Land I'm afraid. That's just the pretext. This Government has no real policy on catching terrorists - indeed its feeble apologetic multi-culturalist liberalism is probably most responsible for making this country so hospitable to terrorists and extremist groups while at the same time it uses the very real threat of terrorism to introduce Stalinist-like control over the rest of us. Draconian and useless - as G Brown himself said in PMQs last week - correctly describes the Government's policies.

TGF UKIP

This could be just about perfect IF Gordon puts up a candidate, even a dud, stunt celebrity one. Clattered on civil liberties by DD and on government waste by DC it should provide a great spectacle for all true conservatives. Unfortunately the corollary will be that will guarantee zero coverage of the by election by the BBC.

In whatever coverage there is, though, I do hope David Craig turns his wrath on Cameron's Tories just as much as Gordon's Labour given their much trumpeted pledge to continue to match Labour in spending taxpayers money like water, except just like Labour, on the Armed Forces.

John Page

That would be much more interesting than Kelvin Mackenzie standing (as the FT said he wouldn't late last week). 'Squandered' is a surprisingly good read, if a bit swashbuckling in places. It will be great if he stands.

Pete

I may be the only one that thinks it, but I think that David Davis has done something remarkable in UK politics.

Suddenly, alsmost everybody of all political persuasions WANT to vote. Whether it be for or against, but they want to register their opinion.

I live in Scotland and I have had guys at work (they know I read the blogs) ask me how they can lodge support for Davis.

When I tell them that at the moment they can't they get pretty pissed off because they feel strongly about this.

The irony is, most of them have been lifelong Labour supporters, as I was, and find it hard to come to terms with the fact that Labour has become a Government which is busily building a police state.

Even up in Scotland, people care about what is happening down there in DD's area.

PS. for pretty much the same reasons + total incompetence + sleaze, the reputation of Labour in Scotland is dirt.

We got them out of power up here, and good riddance it has been!

Silent Hunter

Pete:

You are certainly NOT alone!

"Captain; My Captain"! ;O)

I too live in Scotland and I am hoping that the Scots will see sense and annihilate the Scottish New Nasty Labour Party in precisely the same way they did to the Tories in the mid Nineties.
Certainly the corrupt crook, Wendy Alexander is doing a great job to this effect as the lead lemming running full tilt towards the cliff of the next General Election.

This will allow a centre left party to emerge as the true party that we should have got back in 1997.

How did we get duped into supporting Tony the Liar?

Anyway.........who cares about that now; when David David has turned the cosy political world upside-down.

Great stuff! :O)

Politics just got 'interesting' again.

Frank Pulley

Perhaps we should just abandon parliamentary politics and run the country by a series of student rags.

And to think that democracies around the world have used the British paradigm to set up their governments and judiciaries. FFS grow up, the lot of you!

And just when I thought that perhaps, despite its lack of experience, we had half an HM Opposition - which would have been more than enough to defeat this bunch of incompetent morons. God in Heaven! what are we witnessing here? It's like watching one of those mass suicide cults. Or an old friend going doolally tap.

cuffleyburgers

I read D Craig's superb book on govt waste and was of course shocked as anybody would be. We all suspect how useless they are but Labour have taken this utter incontinence to a new level, and so a noisy campaign highlighting this is overdue.

Absolutely, if we could have an intelligent and charismatic candidate on a pro-referendum ticket then all these issues might get a decent airing.

The danger is of course that a split vote might let in the monster raving looneys - presumably to sit on the government benches. Well it would raise the average IQ.