Sunday 8 February 2009

A tale of two MPs (1) Philip Hollowbone

One day last month I made a couple of entries each of which concerned an MP - a good guy, bad guy sort of thing if you will and now two others have caught my eye so I'll do the same thing again. First up and definitely one of the better ones is Philip Hollowbone who is the Tory MP for Kettering in Northants. According to this feature on the BBC news website he has the lowest level of expenses of any of our elected representatives, claiming under £45,000. Part of the reason evidently is the fact that he doesn't employ any staff, a most unusual situation I would have thought. He must be well organised as he also finds time to be a director of a 'clean coal technology' company and to be a British Transport Police special constable!

For a very long time, and I've touched on this before, I've thought how much better suited backbench MPs are to representing the voters. The BBC's piece about the frugal Mr Hollowbone demonstrates yet again the opportunity such folk have in keeping in touch with the 'real' world. For the life of me I can't see how someone in the government can look after their constituents needs and be aware of life outside the Westminster bubble as well. In effect we have people running the country, some of them not having real work experience and isolated from the travails of the outside world. No wonder they keep getting it wrong!

So three cheers for Mr Hollowbone but I'm afraid it will be three boos for the recipient in my next blog entry.

No comments: