Repairs to Westminster

Anyone going to open a book on which option the good and the great will vote for, concerning the repairs needed to Halitosis Hall? This will be an interesting one! What’s the betting that it won’t be numbers two or three below?

1. MPs and peers remain in Westminster and could cost £5.7 billion  - £7.1 billion. Site programme estimate: 32 years
2. MPs and Peers vacate the chambers in turn, cost of around £4.4 billion.Site programme estimate: 11 years
3. Totally vacating Westminster  for renovation - it would take six years and cost around £3.9 billion. Site programme estimate: 6 years

That extremely reliable and informative rag ‘The Mirror’ ran a poll asking “Should MP’s move out for the duration of the works?”  Result 89% Yes 11% No.

Can’t wait to see the stupid reasons they will come up with!

Do we need Guy Fawkes to come back?

Altrenatively sell it off and turn it into flats / housing build a new parlaiment somewhere central with the funds raised from the sale

A new building in a more central area which could provide a huge boost to a local economy instead of good old London again!!!

The new owners could have a community and pay David Cameron and Tony Blair as their administrators and Boris Johnson or Ken Livingstone as their president

Excellent idea Tadds - as Winchester and Colchester were also English capitals, why not give Rochdale or Sunderland a go for a few years?

With Westminster losing so much influence to Brussels, maybe all the MPs could just a few years off and let Brussels do the whole job.

The final bill will be approximately X4 the quoted figure. At least. Good old British taxpayer, those of us on paye who do pay tax.

These figures pale into insignificance by comparison to what The House Of Windsor costs the tax payer, they breed like rabbits, take fortunes for the price of their existance and put bugger all back, give me The Palace of Westminster any time.

For the estimated cost of repairs it would be cheaper to demolish the whole lot and start again.

 £7.1 billion......

And I thought the Spanish politicial system was corrupt!!!!

Surely the repairs are on the basis of restoring a national monument,  not providing a meeting place  and offices for parliament and the MP’s  ?

My reading of the published articles indicate a max exstiamte of £7.1Bn.

As a Canadian now relocated to living and working in Oxford I can't imagine why anyone who not want The Place of Westminister restored.

I spend my time between head quarters in Zurich and leading our research teams in Oxford and as such spend too much time at Heathrow. During my time at the airport have met so many people who have been visiting the UK and remark on the great collection of historical land marks.

What ever happens it will be restored they just need to work out how to go about it.

Ross

All our Historic Buildings bring into the UK untold amounts of revenue from the many visitors here and abroad, the downfall of the estimates are that whatever price is put on the renovations at the moment most of us know it will probably rise, maybe even double (Hard to believe).

Never in a million years should we start to lose our heritage and what we have stood for these past hundreds of years.

We have the money, after all we spend, perhaps over 12 billion a year on overseas aid, all we need is a person with the balls to say "Enough is enough, now it stops and we spend it on us".

The issue is not if the Palace of Westminster should be  restored or not - there is no question that it must be done. The question was, "would the chosen 650 MP's be prepared to get off their lardy-arses and travel to a newly appointed venue for the shorter restoration option or dig in and refuse to move out?"

It will be interesting to see what reasons they give not to shift their idle bodies elsewhere at a massive expense to the general public. Last week on the television one such ' MP woffler' told a reporter that the idea of moving out was 'asinine'......... only another 649 opinions to go! Wouldn't it be great if we could decide where they go - we could send them over the border with the Krankies for five years, I'm sure NIcola and Alex won't mind.

This thread has the wrong title - it shouldn't be "repairs to Westminster" but "Let's Dismantle Westminster"  that's what you guys seem to want.  But what happens next?  Anarchy?  Rule from Brussels, or perhaps Athens?  (they seem to have similar, short sighted ideas).

On normal parliamentary days the only attendences that you can bank on are those of Dennis Skinner and The Speaker. The House of Lords is similarly pooly attended, the only difference between the two houses is that many members of this one are normally fast asleep.

I reckon that most members of both houses privately realise that they are very fortunate to be paid for doing very little, any spotlight on the theatre of dreams (literally in respect of the lords) might just highlight what a waste of time our political system is.  

Bit of an odd response Ace - nobody has advocated dismantling Westminster as far as I can see. Although considering your observation concerning rule from Brussels - I would suggest that UK and the rest of Europe all already ruled from there.

Again - the post simply solicits opinions of others on EOS as to which option the 'House' will vote for, that’s all.

Woodbug:  It will be interesting to see what reasons they give not to shift their idle bodies elsewhere at a massive expense to the general public.

It would also be interesting to know how many constituents will bother to phone their  MP to ensure they vote the way the constituent want.

I wonder too how many here have ever called their MP to ask how they intended to vote on any issue but nevertheless complain when they do not vote the way they would have wanted them to.

I called my MP in UK many years ago on the day there was to be a vote on hanging, to  ask how he intended to vote.    I then asked him how many constituents had called him on the matter:    I was the third, out of a possible 100,000.   So don’t always blame your MP if you have never bothered to speak to him/her and tell them what you want.

have to agree John. Lots of moans but no action. We have emailed our MP a few times in the last couple of years, always getting a reply the same day. He even asked for our phone number and spent half an hour on the phone to my husband (over access to doctors in our area). He also came and knocked on the door after my husband told him that the Labour candidate had been round! I suppose that was understandable with an election looming.

Back to the original post......I don't think that many MP's would move out of London for the time it would take to restore the Houses of Parliament but we will see what happens. So, all of us living in the Uk should email/call and make our opinions known.

If getting off your backside and moving to a different location for a period means saving the tax-payer a few £bn then it's a no-brainer.