How much has your MP claimed in expenses? If your local democratically elected representative has not yet been fingered by The Daily Telegraph, you can now view your MP’s claims from 2004/05 to 2007/08 here. Well, sort of. Because the important stuff has been blacked out, so you’ll need to wait for the Telegraph to get around to rooting through the uncensored version to find out about second home flipping and other sorts of top-level skullduggery.

But what is clear is the general day-to-day, or month-to-month, liberties taken by many of these people. MPs are entitled to claim up to £400 per month for food and £250 per month for petty cash without providing receipts. My MP, for the Blaydon constituency, is David Anderson. A look at his forms suggests that he claimed the maximum £400 and £250 every single month, on top of a hefty claim for mortgage interest.

Do the extra food costs as a result of travelling to and working in London really add up to £400 per month? And what does the £250 petty cash cover, considering he claims separately for things such as office stationery and taxi fares?

Could it be that Anderson has trousered the maximum amount possible, not because he needed it, but because he knew he could get away with it? Or because he thought he could get away with it?

On matters of transparency of Parliament, Anderson has almost always been absent from votes. In July 2008 he voted against a motion to create external audits and ban claims for furniture. Anderson had a personal interest in this as he has claimed for furniture. The motion was rejected. This April, in what looks like something of a turnaround, he voted for registration and declaration of expenses. This information is from the excellent TheyWorkForYou.com.

No doubt Anderson, like other MPs, will blame the system. The system is undoubtedly rotten, but no-one forced him to take advantage of it. Taking candy from a baby is easy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should do it.

Features MP Expenses

With no news forthcoming from St James’ Park, it’s time for a more serious look at the continuing plight of Newcastle United. Today, prospective bidders who have completed due diligence will be given access to the club’s financial information, apparently via a password-protected website. We will then find out if any of them are prepared to proceed with a bid.

Yesterday, Paddy Barclay in The Times wrote a positive piece encouraging a fan takeover of the club. “Newcastle United supporters suffer more than most from the crocodile-tears technique of journalism, which purports to speak for ‘loyal fans’ who ‘deserve better’ than to spend their ‘hard-earned money’ on an underachieving institution,” writes Barclay. He goes on to chastise those lazy journalists who have built up a misleading media image of Newcastle fans as sobbing, messiah-seeking dimwits. “It is all a caricature, of course,” says Barclay. Hopefully his odious colleague Mathew Syed will take note.

Barclay argues that, if Newcastle United’s true value is £75 million, then 200,000 fans chipping in £375 each would cover the cost of buying the club. A nice idea, but a pipe dream of course. But some form of fan involvement is essential. I’ve argued for a long time that Ashley has never really owned “the club” – he owns the stadium, the fixtures and fittings, and the players’ bloated contracts, but the club is the fans, and Ashley certainly doesn’t own them.

When Sir John Hall floated the club in the early 90s, many fans, myself included, bought shares for £500. Mike Ashley’s takeover saw us sell those shares for around £300. Ashley’s stewardship has seen the club’s value fall by around 40 percent from £134 million to around £80 million. Based on those figures, I would be happy to buy back my shares for their adjusted current value of £177.

With pre-season training starting on 1st July (and season ticket renewals due in by the same day) effective action needs to be taken immediately. Here are five steps to secure the future of the football club:

1. Sell, sell, sell! Ashley needs to get out, and get out quick, but with the best will in the world this won’t happen before the end of the close season. Talk of a Singapore-based group, with a plan for a Barca-style fans’ membership scheme, sounds promising but remains unconfirmed, as is alleged interest from a US investor. Talk of a return for Freddy Shepherd is fairly depressing. But there needs at least to be some light at the end of the tunnel, some cause for optimism, in order to…

2. Secure season ticket renewals. The first step the club might want to take is to actually include season ticket renewal forms inside season ticket renewal packs – many packs have been sent out this week with a begging letter from Derek Llambias but without the necessary form to actually renew. The pack, a fairly pathetic document, features no player photos (for obvious reasons), no hint of optimism, and absolutely no incentive to renew, aside from the usual “it’s your duty” school of thought. Are they relying on blind faith or blind stupidity? Fans need an incentive to renew, and there can be no bigger incentive than…

3. Appoint Alan Shearer. Not because he is the best football manager in the world, but because he is the best manager for Newcastle United. He understands the club and can galvanise the city. He can attract players to an otherwise unattractive club. And he can wield a bloody big axe…

4. Shift the dead wood. Since season ended four weeks ago, Newcastle have paid Michael Owen, whose contract expires at the end of June, £460,000. Add fellow contract expirees Mark Viduka and Caludio Capaca and that figure rises to £780,200. Thankfully, their time on the wage bill is coming to an end. But since the season ended the club has paid Fabio Coliccini, Kevin Nolan, Joey Barton, Alan Smith and Geremi £1,220,000. Almost one and a quarter million pounds on five players who must surely never play for Newcastle United ever again. If these players are still on the books at the start of next season they will have cost over £3 million over the course of the close season. It doesn’t take a financial expert to spot that this needs to be addressed immediately. Of course, it should have been addressed on 25th May, with steps taken to shift these woeful money-drainers out and as far away from Newcastle upon Tyne as quickly as possible. The club desperately needs to stop haemorrhaging money on these overpaid failures, and also needs to fund player acquisitions…

5. Buy well, but buy quickly. Newcastle United are a Championship club, and must abandon all hope of signing big name players. In their last spell in football’s second tier, Newcastle survived and then prospered thanks to the likes of David Kelly, Gavin Peacock and Brian Kilcline – all of whom were jettisoned when the club were promoted to the Premier League. They were the right players for the job, and that’s what Shearer must look for. However, the club must also buy at least one “marquee” player – someone to sell shirts, score goals and get the fans singing his name. In 1993, Kevin Keegan bought Andy Cole to shoot for promotion. In 1982, Arthur Cox bought Keegan to take the club up. Is Jermaine Beckford, transfer-listed at Leeds, that man? Or does Shearer have someone else up his sleeve?

The next few days and weeks will be crucial to the future of Newcastle United Football Club. Further mismanagement at this stage would be disastrous for the team, for the city, and for anyone who holds the club dear.

My book about supporting Newcastle United in happier times is Black & White Army.

Football Newcastle United

If the ad breaks between consistently rubbish summer TV shows are anything to go by, music compilation CDs are this season’s must-have items. And, boy, are they getting the hard sell.

There’s another Bruce Springsteen compilation. Cat Stevens’ best of is, apparently, ‘one of the best compilations ever!’ The Very Best of Don Henley features Boys of Summer and, erm, you know, all his other best stuff…

I hate commercial compilation CDs (got to love homemade ones, though). In the digital age they are a redundant concept. Pre-digital, they did fill a need. Like a couple of songs by one particular artist, and keen to dip into the back catalogue without buying all the albums? Before the internet, would need to pick up a compilation CD (or, indeed, an LP or cassette). You’d accept that fact that there’d be a few tracks you didn’t like, and a few of your favourites would be missing, and the track order might be a bit annoying – because there was nothing you could do about it.

Now you make your own compilations. You go to Spotify or iTunes and you compile a playlist or download all your favourite tracks and arrange them in a sensible order (always chronological, I’m saying!). You can burn a CD if you need one, tweaking it for individual friends or parties or car journeys. You are in control, and you get exactly what you want. Your personal version of the Very Best of Don Henley ends up with a much shorter running time.

The record companies seem to have realised that time is running out to peddle their officially-compiled compilations. I quite like Cat Stevens, but can the Best of Cat Stevens really be considered one of the best compilations ever? There are five or six great songs on there, but there are at least as many that only the most devout Yusuf Islam fan could describe as anything other than bloody awful.

And pity all the Dads who get Don Henley’s CD for Father’s Day on account of whistling Boys of Summer once within earshot of an offspring, and then have to appear grateful while subjecting their ears to the album’s other 12 tracks of turgidly forgettable soft rock.

Polydor have bought text ads on Amazon: ‘Celebrate the career of a legend with The Very Best Of Don Henley.’ Who is this legend, and how can we be confident that he or she would like to celebrate their career with a 92-percent rubbish Don Henley CD?

Back catalogue sales make up a huge portion of record company turnover, but they need to accept that the way we consume music has changed forever. No longer can they trawl the archives every year for another batch of artists to revive courtesy of a best of CD. Pre-selected compilations are going to die out in the very near future.

The ad for Bruce Springsteen’s new best of CD helpfully advises that it is also available as a download. But why would anyone bother to download a pre-selected compilation, when they can download their favourite tracks individually and compile their own compilation? Bruce’s new Greatest Hits is essentially a re-ordered version of his last Greatest Hits, and it’s obviously very good, but it can still be improved by the addition of your personal faves that didn’t make the fairly obvious selection. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out or Atlantic City, anyone?

With compilations, homemade has always been the way to go, since the days of the C90, and while hand-compiled tapes and CDs still make great gifts, it’s a whole lot easier to email over a Spotify playlist.

It would seem natural to end this with some links to Spotify compilations I’ve compiled. But they’ve got my favourite songs on. Go and compile your own.

Music, Technology Music Compilations, Spotify