This Fraudsters' Parliament - 6

I decided that I needed to find out a little more information about what appeared to be 'somewhat shady' financial practices going on in parliament! The first thing I did was buy a copy of Heathers Brooke's book Your Right to Know.  This was to be prove invaluable when composing Freedom of Information requests.

I was later to read Martin Bell's book  A Very British Revolution which gave a very comprehensive account of a one time insider's views on the shameful activities of those in this Fraudsters' Parliament! (My words-not Martin Bell's,- who, by the way is no relation!)

Another excellent source of information was to be the account of The Daily Telegraph's exposure of the whole affair in No Expenses Spared by Robert Winnett and Gordon Rayner.

All were available from Amazon or any good bookshop at both new and secondhand prices!

You may want to also have a look at Heather Brooke's forthcoming book which is due out in early 2010. There is also a BBC4 TV drama programme about Ms Brooke's Freedom of Information campaign relating to the MPs' expenses scandal which is due on air in early 2010 and entitled Bringing Down The House

Details can be found on the Your Right To Know website at;

http://www.yrtk.org/

or at;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8403167.stm

I also discovered that the main newspapers in the UK have online editions... with online comments capability!

Now I could check out a story from several sources in an attempt get more of an overview of exactly what was happening and attempt to 'filter out' some political bias in individual newspapers when searching for 'facts'.

I was still a beginner at this but I was getting better!

I found that The Times welcomed online comments about its articles on political matters. The Times online edition can be found at;

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/

If you want to check out their articles on the UK MPs' expenses scandal click on the link above and type in MPs' expenses in the SEARCH box. That will take you to their archive with an option to go to the most recent articles. In order to comment you have to login but this is an easy process!

The Daily Mail also has an online edition at;

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html

Click on the above link and type in MPs' expenses in the SEARCH box. That will take you to their archive with an option to go to the most recent articles. In order to comment you have to login but this is an easy process!

The Guardian newspaper has an excellent comments capability and their online edition can be found at;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/

It has simple formatting buttons to enable a reader to format the text in their comment including BOLD  and ITALIC for added impact.

Click on the above link and type in MPs' expenses in the SEARCH box. That will take you to their archive with an option to go to the most recent articles. In order to comment you have to login but this is an easy process!

The Daily Express also has an online edition. It can be found at;

http://www.express.co.uk/home

The process for commenting is similar to that for the other newspapers shown.

The Independent also has a healthy comments capability. This online edition of this newspaper can be found at;

http://www.independent.co.uk/