Hey diddle diddle - it's all within the rules.

Why does access to YOUR MP's expenses need clarification?
Within a hundred yards - tells my age -of Blackpool South's MP Gordon Marsden's tax payers expense freebie flat on Highfield Road is a pensioner, in reality many pensioners. One in particular, a former regular Royal Marine, a former member of the ultra elite Special Boat Section along with the likes of Captain Paddy (JJD-John Jerald Durham) Ashdown. Except that the pensioner lives in poverty because his ethics will not allow him to claim his full entitlements, because of the intrusive nature of means testing.
Yet the Blackpool Labour stalwart has no problems of getting all the freebies he is entitled to, under his own rules, unlike former public servants who drift away in silence. To add insult to injury, a former labour government removed the safety net of a decent pension, paid for by his own donations, by changing the rules by which serviceman's pensions were calculated DOWNWARDS. To gain a full pension pre the 1975 Social Security and Pensions Act, one had to complete a full 22 years of the 22 year contract- the standard contract for servicemen and women, which only came into force once you were eighteen years of age. That meant all those who gained medals before their 18th birthdays got NOWT, NOTHING, ZILTS, KISS YOUR POLITICIANS FAT ARSE for service served and lives lost. Then all contributions to your pension was arbitrarily cut from a 22 full part to 36. That is to say that if you did 21 years six months, instead of getting 21.5 of 22, ie, almost a full pension once your entitlement kicked in, you got 21.5 of a 36 full part. A third of your contribution went towards MP's expenses and not towards your pension.
AND YOU VOTE FOR THEM??? And I haven't even mentioned that not only would Marsden never probably have got into the Marines, why mince words, he would not have got into the Forces because -rightly in many's the opinion -homosexuals were barred from HMF. It is doubtful if he had the moral fibre to do a Commando course then the Swimmer Canoeinst rigours, though he may have become an assett on 2S messdeck of the old Albion - or Kiss Company on the Rusty B.