HARD TIMES?

I thought we were living in the worst economic crisis in living memory. Belts are supposed to be being tightened. Straits are becoming more dire. Jobs being lost, benefits being reviewed, the outlook, like the weather, seems cloudy with rain at times. There may indeed be trouble ahead.

Now recently, I have been in sanguine mode. Whilst I have continued to restrict my ramblings to important issues such as football, golf, Barney training and the obligatory rant about Fergie the football manager, I have done so in measured tones, displaying none of the inner turmoil that lies deep within my troubled psyche. But a couple of things have come to light that have rekindled the flame within and I know I should know better, for it`s not good for me, but I can`t let them go unreported.

The first concerns our old friend the European Union. The photo above is of Baroness Ashton of Upholland, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, showing all the gravitas, competence and sense of destiny befitting of someone in such high office. Her burgeoning non-elected, barely representative empire continues to grow in size and delusion so that it now requires a huge palatial office block in Brussels from which to discharge its role and its function.

Now, no-one I know is at all sure what that role or function consists of, especially bearing in mind that the nation states of the EU appear to have at least adequate, if not downright excellent, Departments for Foreign Affairs and Security. The simple truth is that we just don`t need Cathy Ashton and her chums, especially as we learn today that the office block alone is going to cost £8million a year to lease so it can hold the 7,000 staff and squander its annual budget of £8.7billion. And, of course, that`s just for starters.

Closer to home, we also discover that the new Independant Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), set up to deal with MPs` claims and expenses, has run in to trouble with its new regime of making sure that all such claims are legitimate. It seems the new procedures have angered MPs, who have been used to a kind of laissez faire approach to grabbing taxpayers` cash. There have been accusations of IPSA staff being bullied,verbally abused and subjected to a stream of `colourful language` by a number of the 650 MPs we seem saddled with. One MP went so far as to call IPSA Chairman, Sir Ian Kennedy, `a stupid expletive!` (Modesty prevents me from including the full version.) Despite the intimidation, however, IPSA are frantically working through MPs claims which only last week totalled over 4,000, resulting in £650,000 of taxpayers` money being doled out. And, of course, our MPs are still away from Westminster on their three months break from Parliament so goodness know what the bill will be when they really get going.

And so it seems that happy days are indeed here again for the political classes who still `don`t get it,` leaving me and all the others who pay for their whims and fancies, to shrug our shoulders and seek refuge in football, golf, Barney training and Fergie ranting, which I promise to get back to, now I`ve got that off my chest.