ELLIOT MORLEY
22 May 2011 by JOHN DONALDSONI find some of the local comments on the former Scunthorpe MP Elliot Morley quite disgraceful and in many ways uncalled for. He was MP for over twenty years and in many ways tried to represent his constituents to the best of his ability which some of these caustic comments appear to forget.
Okay he did wrong and he and his family are paying a heavy price without certain members of the public really putting the boot in and I personally feel that in many ways he may have been the victim of circumstances.
Obviously I am not in a position to know all the intimate details of the situation, but I do know, from personal experience, the demands on the time of any MP let alone a government minister must and is punishing. I should imagine even attempting to keep abrest of his constituents problems would demand a 24/7 requirement attention of his mind plus time and mind demands of governmental issues.
People say they are well paid for the job and maybe so, in addition they have help from their staff, but nevertheless I can appreciate that the amount of paper work and bureaucracy that Elliot Morley had to contend with must have been and I am sure was tremendous.
I do not believe for one moment that Elliot Morley deliberately sat down and personally claimed monies that he was not entitled to and would in all probabllity the paperwork would have been processed by bureaucrats.
Whilst an individual is personally responsible for his own paperwork in a matter of this nature, I can understand that in the circumstances and time constraints of the MP that matters of this nature can get through the system without being deliberate.
At the end of the day, I can imagine that being an MPor local councillor and trying to please the general public is an almost impossible job that should be avoided at almost any cost.
Good luck to Elliot Morley and his family you are well out of it.
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Comments
I fail to see how you can say these things, John. Its amazing that you can balance fraud against deeds, he may have done some good for the area but in the end he profited from it, from us.
Not one funny anecdote from somebody who has forgotton, not one sad story of how it ruined someones life, not one historical article of it happening before.
How many people that you know, or even have heard of, that have forgotten that their mortgage has been paid off ?
Just to put in a little in perspective, google indexes over a trillion pages on the web (as of 2008), if you search for the term "i forgot my mortgage was paid" you'll find about three hits, all referring to dodgy U.K politicians.
Not one funny anecdote from somebody who has forgotton, not one sad story of how it ruined someones life, not one historical article of it happening before.
Bert Bollocks says "will I be able to preview this" 
Some people haven't a clue about smileys - rolling over the icon in the chioce pop-up should give a description of the smiley.
qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm1234567890!"£$%^&*()-=_+{}[];'#:@~,./<>?||
Thanks for the feedback Black Flag, I'll add some descriptions to the overlay!
I see you trying a char string there to see what goes through, all user input is run through a html purifier - http://htmlpurifier.org/ and also checked for xss via codeigniter's librarys (and also made safe for database input) so while some of those characters may be dangerous, on their own they are not.
This must be a wind up,a self confessed Fraudster and a liar who tried to worm out of being punished,is all Elliot Morley is .Proven in court ,How anyone can possibly defend it is beyond me.Clearly a close personal friend?
I'm sorry fans64 but I am not a close personal friend of Elliot Morley and have never even voted for him in any election as I am not in the Scunthorpe Constituency.
I made my comments on Mr Morley soley on the basis of my personal experience of how an MP can get tied up in constituency business and time just runs away and also being a government minister I can well understand that paperwork and bureaucracy is generally left to other administrators.
Even personal matters such as a mortgage completion could have been left to his personal staff.
I appreciate that as an individual he is personally responsible for the final paperwork submissions but being tied up in constituency and governmental works on a 24/7 timescale could in my opinion lead to all sorts of clerical and administrative problems.
I am still of the belief that Mr Morlley would not purposely sit down and deliberately do some thing of this nature that could be so easily checked, but at the end of the day he alone was responsible for final paperwork and he as such has to carry the can.
In addition to Mr Morley's punishment I would like to see the people and administrators in government committees who thought up such a nonsensical method of paying MP's expenses either sacked or prosecuted for sheer incompetence.
As a self employed consultant I worked for many years in London for various companies and payment for my services was a rate that covered everything including accommodation, travel and all other costs that was necessary for my work. No other payment was made or claimed by me that was not included in the rate I first negotiated on a supply and demand competive basis with the various companies. This is the normal way that payment for work and expenses is done on a logical basis in general to self employed people and works. Why are MP's any different to normal worke rs?
Who ever thought up the complicated, complex and unimaginative system of paying MP's expenses in the way and manner that appears to have been done can only have been thought up by people with very little experience of monies or how things are done in business and it cannot continue in such an incompetent manner.
People state that Elliot Morley was a self confessed fraudster, but if these legal people decided that the claims were wrong then no matter if the bureaucratic administrators processed the claims which were later considered wrong, he Mr Morley was personally responsible and guilty in law even though he may not have drawn up the paperwork himself.
I am still of a mind, even though I do not know Elliot Morley, that a person of his backgroung would not personally sit down and deliberately claim monies of this nature.
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Interesting point of view. Have you read the plea the defines submitted in which mr Morley admitted he had deliberately made fraudulent claims because of s fall out with the fees office?
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