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MPs' Expenses Will Finally Be Published on Thursday

By Jonathan Walker on Jun 16, 09 11:23 PM in Politics

You've seen what journalists make of MPs' expenses claims. And you may have seen some of the claims themselves, when individual MPs chose to place them on their websites.

But on Thursday, June 18, the great British public will at last be allowed to examined every claim, in detail, when the House of Commons finally gets around to making them officially available.

The whole lot is going up on the website for people to examine.

Well, kind of. Because what you're going to get is the censored version (officially called the "redacted" version"), missing out details such as the addresses of homes MPs are claiming subsidies on.

So you won't know, for example, if MPs are claiming cash for properties in their constituency, or in London, or somewhere else entirely.

Neither will it be possible to tell if they have "flipped" properties - buying furniture for one home and then designating another one as their second residence, allowing them to get a second sofa.

Perhaps it doesn't matter - as the newspapers have already uncovered all the dirt.

But I'm betting people won't see it that way. This is a chance for the nation's bloggers to prove Gordon Brown is right about the power of the interweb and spot the stories the traditional media have missed.

At least, assuming they're not already sick to the back teeth of expenses.

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1 Comments


Thank you Jonathan Walker for this post.
Some things are not useful to all persons.

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