Can you imagine this?

[anotheoldgit]

Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than

600 employees and has the following employee statistics.......

29 have been accused of spouse abuse

7 have been arrested for fraud

9 have been accused of writing bad cheques

17 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses

3 have done time for assault

71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit

14 have been arrested on drug-related charges

8 have been arrested for shoplifting

21 are currently defendants in lawsuits

84 have been arrested for drink driving in the last year

Which organisation is this?

It's the 635 members of the House of Commons, the same group that, cranks out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us inline.

[4GS]

Sounds about right

[China Doll]

I thought you were going to say it was the editorial staff at AB.

It would certainly explain a lot!

[Oneeyedvic]

And it is still an Urban Myth

http://66.165.133.65/politics/crime/congress.a sp

[mike1222]

I thought you were really going to upset Mani and say that it was the CRE!!!

[vehelpfulguy]

A good example of lying with statistics. All these crimes by 600 members looks bad.

But of course he does not say anywhere in his append WHEN some of these crimes where committed, some may be decades or centuries old.

It is not the SAME 600 employees each year, so over the decades we have had parliament the numbers of MPs must run into the thousands.

And some of these crimes MAY have been done BEFORE or AFTER they were MPs.

And even if it was only while they were MPs, some MPs are there for decades.

So if you multiply the number of MPs since parliment began, plus the total life span of each MP (or their period in office) it probably is not so bad.

I bet if you took the same number of "ordinairy" people over the same period you would probably get the same sort of figures.

[NJOK]

You could also argue that they are more prone to accusations of crime as they are high profile. I bet professional footballers suffer more false rape accusations that other men of a similar age.

That said, it wouldn't surprise me if MPs did have a high tendency towards wrongdoing. You've got to be a bit odd psychologically to want to stand for Parliament.

It's like wanting to be a policeman. It should immediately disqualify you from getting the job. Deciding that you'd be a good person to tell others what to do isn't the right personality trait for a policeman or an MP.

[Shadow Man]

I thought it was the House of Lords, not the House of Commons who "crank" up new laws????

[rojash]

What an amazing coincidence that the statistics for the house of commons are identical (apart from the mistyping of 17 and 117 on the bankruptcy item) to those for the US Congress. Or could it just be that it's all b*ll*x?

[sp1814]

Oneeyedvic

How did you know that was an urban myth???

[Oneeyedvic]

cos it has been doing the rounds for years.

Whenever I get a circuitous email (and this always used to be sent by email) I google it to find out its validity.

Most of these type of emails are urban myths.

[jake-the-peg]

Well done!

http://www.Snopes.com is a good source for checking Urban Myths but they are a bit US centric

[anotheoldgit]

Well spotted Oneeyedvic (uh! I do hate typing your name too many e- numbers) Yes I did get it in an Email, thought it rather amusing, hoped other ABers would.

Great answer vehelpfulguy, a lot of thought gone into that.

mike1222, Would I really want to upset Mani? perish the thought.

I take it you are anti-police NJOK, but they are not there to cramp your style by telling you what to do, their job is to make sure you obey the law.