Talk:Margaret Moran

Time in office
Is there a reason why the end of Margaret Moran's time in office is stated as 12 April 2010 instead of 6 May 2010 (the date of the general election, which would be the usual date to cite)? This is not explained in the article, as far as I can see. Ondewelle (talk) 09:18, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Expenses
Please can people stop deleting important parts of the expenses section and leaving it so it barely makes sense. The information is very well sourced and highly significant given that such levels of spending by MPs (especially on postage) came under significant criticism from numerous sources and directly resulted in a change of the rules. Moran's spending has been consistently high over the years on average so that is notable too. Perhaps someone can find some sort of justification for the levels of expenditure and add that for balance? However, there doesn't seem to be anything obvious as she doesn't travel large distances for example nor does she live in London. (so if anything you'd expect smaller claims).--Shakehandsman (talk) 17:30, 16 February 2009 (UTC).

Sometimes things are so outrageous that providing contrary views for "balance" actually conceals the truth.

The piece seems accurate to me and cites many sources.

She lives in London, Luton and Southampton.

Voting Records
Following discusions on other wikipages citing theyworkforyou is not neutral nor helpful.

See discussion Talk:Harriet_Harman - by Annexed - on the topic of theyworkforyou and uses on Wikipedia.

...Talk:David_Lammy, where the final decision was removal. 1a) The information is subject to considerable change and whilst TWFY is updated automatically, Wikipedia is not. Keeping it up to date for all MPs is too big a task for editors, and is unnecessary given the information exists elsewhere, on a well-known site that we already link to. This is particularly relevant as I've just compared the info in the current revision (228403824) to that on TWFY for Harriet Harman and it is different - the current revision says "Has not voted on a freedom of information act", whilst the TWFY page says "Voted for a transparent Parliament". It appears the criteria for this policy issue has been amended, or that it has been replaced altogether with a different one. 1b) TWFY.com is not the source of the information anyway. The data comes from The Public Whip and is interpreted by TWFY (although the two sites are have close links). Individual voting details may be relevant for particular politicians (Iraq for Harriet Harman is probably one, given her change of heart) but block copying is not. And I didn't think it was Wikipedia policy to directly copy blocks of information from other sites anyway. 2a) The choice of topics on which voting has been tracked is definitely POV, as they could almost all be construed as anti-government. There's nothing, for example, on whether an MP voted for/against more money for the health service, or for/against the schools rebuilding programme - issues that Labour supporters might point to to show their MPs in a better light. Who should decide if an issue is 'controversial' or not? TWFY.com have made a decent effort, but it's still their POV. For example, "introducing student fees" used to be one of their controversial issues - but now student fees are widely accepted and considered controversial. It has been replaced by "introducing student top-up fees", the controversy over which has declined and maybe that too will be removed in time. 2b) The anti-government POV aspect is reinforced by the fact that voting record summaries are almost only added to Labour MPs and not those from other parties. And from what I've seen it's often added by the same few editors. 3a) The way the summary of the voting record is calculated lacks subtlety. For example, an MP who voted in favour on all the votes on national smoking ban legislation, but voted against the legislation for bans that would have applied just to Wales or just to taxis in London is considered to be 'moderately in favour of banning smoking'. There is an argument to be had here (and a POV one at that) as to whether voting for a complete ban should over-ride not voting for smaller, piecemeal measures. The context is important for the data to be meaningful, and these crude summaries cannot always do justice to complicated issues. 3b) On this particular article, all the 'moderate', 'strong' and 'very strong' qualifiers to voting behaviour have been removed. This potentially makes the information inaccurate, as MPs may vote for one measure on banning smoking and against another. Having just 'for' or 'against' on Wikipedia is potentially misleading. 4) There is no appreciation in the voting record on the quality of legislation. MPs may approve of the intent behind the legislation, but not the wording of the bill in front of them. The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006 is an excellent example, as the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats publicly backed the intent of the legislation to remove burdensome regulations from business, but voted against the government's bill on numerous occasions until the text was improved - and then supported it at the end. A voting summary could be produced that showed MPs as indecisive on key issues, when actually the way they vote each time is entirely consistent with their principles and reflects them doing their job of scrutinising legislation well. Principle and practice can justifiably be two different things in this context, and voting summaries cannot take into account. 5) The information is of particularly little value in relation to ministers and shadow cabinet members. It is unnecessary not only because there is an overt expectation that they will vote with the party line - it is the nature of being in party politics at the highest levels - but also because senior figures rebelling against the party line on important votes is so rare that when it happens it gets plenty of media coverage. Those occasions are certainly noteworthy, but there will be better source material (e.g. newspaper articles) to explain what took place and why, than a simple voted for or against checklist. Enanen (talk) 20:53, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

More like a list than an article
Seem to be significant style problems with this article. It wasn't so bad a few weeks back, but no longer seems to contain paragraphs but just seperated lists of sentences - really doesn't read at all well. Dont' sure what the appropriate tag is for this but can someone tag it or fix the problems please.--Shakehandsman (talk) 01:52, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

The expenses controversy section
This section is totally excessive and could easily be trimmed in half, why so much content? It gives the biography the appearance of an attack page. Off2riorob (talk) 14:09, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It's nothing at all like an attack article - everything is well sourced and generally well balanced, giving Moran's views on the issues wherever she has spoken. Moran has a long history of expenses abuses, is one of the most controversial figures in the hugely notable expenses scandal, she has gone into hiding over the incidents, is barred form standing for the Labour party at the next election, and is currently under investigation for her conduct and still hasn't even apologised. There are just so many controversies surrounding her (there were plenty of them even before the expenses scandal itself). We really can't start watering down article just because someone has such a long catalogue of wrongdoing. Rather than continuing your campaign of trying to remove the key content from articles of Labour MPs on Wikipedia, why not instead contribute something by adding content to those with relatively sparse biographies (as is the case here). For example you could write about Moran's work establishing Women's Parliamentary Radio as that's an obvious omission.--Shakehandsman (talk) 18:34, 11 January 2010 (UTC)


 * This page has been discussed in the Telegraph - see here. Could somebody, who knows how, put a message at the top to mention this? Malick78 (talk) 15:10, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Golden goodbye update needed
The article states (referenced to a piece in the Daily Mail) that the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards was, before the 2010 election, looking for a way to dock Moran's golden goodbye, on the grounds that she essentially gave up being an MP but didn't resign. Did he succeed in the doing this or did she get the full generous severance package? Beorhtwulf (talk) 19:35, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

External links modified
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