Liberal Democrats' Day of Reckoning

 

 

It was the turn of the Liberal Democrats today for some of their outrageous expense claims to be published. Andrew George, the MP for St Ives, claims £847 a month from taxpayers on mortgage interest payments for his riverside flat. But the home insurance policy included on his expenses file is in the name of his 21-year-old daughter, Morvah George, a student who has worked as a professional model and as an intern for her father in Parliament. Mr George admitted that his daughter kept some of her belongings there and used it as a “bolt-hole” but denied she spent more time there than him. He said his insurers had prevented him from being named on the policy as well as on one at his Cornish home. Mr George’s claims reveal how MPs are able to use the system to buy properties from which their families can benefit.

 

Nick Harvey, who helps oversee the administration of parliament, received letters from the fees office telling him to submit copies of his mortgage statements and bills for his cleaner. Mr Harvey, the MP for North Devon, has claimed second homes allowances totalling £143,658 for his house in London, including interest payments on his £340,000 mortgage, which were £1,258 per month in June 2008. The Liberal Democrat spokesman on defence also claims £30 per month for his subscription to Sky Sports and claimed £3,515 for food between 2004 and 2008.

 

Chris Huhne, 54, the LibDems’ Home Affairs spokesman, is one of parliament’s wealthiest MPs, having built a fortune during his previous career as a City economist, where he founded his own ratings company. He owns his second home in his Eastleigh constituency in Hampshire outright but regularly claims for its renovation. In August 2006 he was reimbursed for a £5,066 builder’s invoice that included having two coats of “red rustic timber care” applied to garden items, and two coats of green preservative for fences. On another occasion Mr Huhne submitted a handyman’s bill for £77.31, covering odd jobs such as “replacing rope on swinging chair”.  Mr Huhne’s constituency home is one of seven he owns in Britain. As well as his London residence in Clapham, he owns five properties in London and Oxford, from which he receives rental income, according to his entry in the register of members’ interests. He also has a share of a holiday home in France, while his wife, Vicky Pryce, the chief economic adviser to the Department of Trade and Industry, owns a property in Greece. Mr Huhne’s claims under the additional costs allowance include a bill for £119 for a Corby trouser press, finished in mahogany, from John Lewis. His incidental expenses provision claims, which cover the running costs of his offices in London and in his constituency, include a single receipt for semi-skimmed milk (62p), and others for chocolate HobNobs (79p), tea bags (89p) and a bus ticket (£3.20). Among the items carefully crossed off on the receipts are a cheese muffin (99p), bacon flavour Wheat Crunchies (28p) and Ready Brek (£1.81). One of his most unusual claims is an £85.35 bill for the “mounting, framing and inscription of photo of Chris Huhne”. "Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity." (Ecclesiastes 12:8). Compare all this to the fact that six beds were removed from a hospital in the Isle of Skye on Monday, supposedly to save money. Compare it to the fact that there was only one ambulance serving the Shetland Islands until now. Should it really come as a surprise to those people that the natives in every part of the UK might be getting restless?

 

 

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said MPs should have to return any profits they make on their second homes to the taxpayer. As the spotlight on MPs' expenses turned on his party, Mr Clegg said he had always intended to give back any profits that he makes when he eventually comes to sell up. He said he could now be requiring members of his frontbench team to do the same until there were new rules in place. He is obviously following in the footsteps of David Cameron and Gordon Brown, who have suddenly been laying down the law to their own members. What utter hypocrisy! Not a word would have been said by any of them if the whole sorry scandal hadn’t been exposed. The bulls in Texas are a poor second when it comes to fertilising grass. Talking of Texas, the world record for throwing and catching a raw unbroken egg was set in 1978 in the Lone Star state, when Johnny Dell Foley threw a fresh egg 323ft 2ins (98.51m) to his cousin Keith Thomas. 31 years on, and we could do with champion egg throwers again, preferably using the rotten variety.

Thanks for the Toilet Seat and the Manure!

The revelations in the UK’s Telegraph newspaper over the past few days regarding MPs’ expenses are mind boggling, to say the least. Lord Mandelson billed taxpayers almost £3,000 for work carried out on his constituency home in Hartlepool less than a week after he announced his decision to stand down as an MP. The Business Secretary renovated the terrace house in 2004 before selling it and making a profit of £136,000….over five years, Mr David Miliband spent just under £30,000 on repairs, decoration and furnishings for his £120,000 home in South Shields. On at least one occasion, he exceeded the maximum allowable amount and had his claim cut back. Mr Miliband, the current Foreign Secretary, spent up to £180 every three months on his garden, prompting his own gardener at one point to ask whether all the work was required….Hazel Blears, Communities Secretary, claimed for three properties in a single year at taxpayers’ expense. Miss Blears, who  is responsible for housing policy, also spent time in one of London’s most fashionable hotels paid for from public funds. In March, 2004, Miss Blears stated that her second home was the property she owned in her Salford constituency. During that month she bought an £850 television set and video recorder from Selfridges, and a £651 mattress from Marks & Spencer. Her mortgage on the Salford property, which she has owned with her husband since June, 1997, was £300 a month. The following month she changed her declaration and began claiming that a flat in Kennington, south London, was her second home. She started claiming £850 a month for the mortgage on the flat….David Willetts, the Shadow Innovation, Universities and Skills Secretary is nicknamed "Two Brains" because of his formidable intellect,  but his expenses suggest he cannot work out how to change a light bulb. Mr Willetts billed the taxpayer £115 plus VAT for workmen to replace 25 light bulbs at his second home in west London. On the same bill, Mr Willetts charged another £80 to “change lights in bathroom”, part of a £2,191.38 invoice for odd jobs that included cleaning a shower head….we have John Prescott, who would presumably have been happy using the ship’s heads during his Merchant Navy days, claiming for two toilet seats in the space of a year. Going by his bulk, I suppose we should be relieved that he only broke the two.

 

On the Conservative side, we have James Arbuthnot claiming £1,471 in the period 2006-07 for pool maintenance at a house he rented before buying a £2 million home without a mortgage two years ago…. Douglas Hogg, the former agriculture secretary, submitted a claim form including more than £2,000 for the moat around his country estate to be cleared. The taxpayer also helped meet the cost of a full-time housekeeper, including her car. The public finances also helped pay for work to Mr Hogg’s stables and for his piano to be tuned…. Sir Michael Spicer, the Conservatives’ most senior backbench MP, claimed £5,650 in nine months for his garden to be maintained. In December 2006, he submitted a detailed invoice which included “hedge cutting ... helipad”, although he claimed last night that the “helipad” was a “family joke”. The Conservative grandee successfully claimed for the costs of hanging a chandelier in his main manor house…. Michael Ancram, who is the Marquess of Lothian, claimed more than £14,000 a year in expenses while owning three properties, none of which have a mortgage and are worth an estimated £8 million…. David Heathcoat-Amory claimed for more than £380 of horse manure for his garden. A comment springs to mind, but I won’t bother to scribble it down – I’ll leave it to the reader’s fertile imagination.

There have been some outrageous smaller claims over the past few years, such as £1.65 for a bottle of shampoo for a balding Labour backbencher in 2007, £2.22 for two packs of Tampax for a MALE Conservative MP, who seems to have lost more than his seat in 2005, and 5p for an Ikea carrier bag, claimed by a Scottish Labour MP. Quite a few of them have claimed for biscuits as well, both doggie ones, and the chocolate variety, the latter presumably for themselves. 

 

Correspondence seen by The Daily Telegraph suggests that some of the MPs have been claiming for their country homes for many years, stretching back to when receipts were not necessary for parliamentary expenses. When they were required to produce detailed receipts about five years ago, they began simply producing statements listing all the costs of their homes. In some cases, the Fees Office agreed to pay the maximum allowance after coming under pressure from the MPs. The Fees Office is supposed to check on claims, and to report excessive claims to the Commons Speaker. Obviously, if they haven’t been carrying out their duties properly, then the fault lies at their door, but if they HAVE made the Speaker aware of some of the more ridiculous claims, then his job must surely be on the line.

 

Those disclosures have finally forced my hand – I’ll be standing for the Freeloaders Party at the next election. If you happen to live in my constituency, please make sure that you put the cross beside my name, as I’ll be assured of scoffing as many Jaffa Cakes as I can, at your expense of course.

 

Willie Roe – Will He Go?

After the fuss over the past couple of weeks concerning MPs’ expenses, second houses etc, I thought that things had cooled down somewhat. Not a chance! Quangos have always been rather dodgy in my opinion, and the latest story concerning one of them has only added to my misgivings. It was revealed last weekend that Highlands and Islands Enterprise is to carry out an internal audit of contracts worth almost £100,000 that were awarded to a consultancy firm run by the agency’s chairman. The investigation will examine 15 contracts awarded to Edinburgh-based Rocket Science, which is run by William Roe, who is also the chairman of HIE.

The announcement of the audit, which will be overseen by Audit Scotland, comes a month after Mr Roe’s company repaid HIE an £8,000 consultancy fee following an allegation that Rocket Science plagiarised information from two academic studies. The audit will establish whether there was any further plagiarism in another 14 contracts – worth a combined £95,494 – that were awarded to Rocket Science between 2005 and this year. The decision to investigate was revealed in a letter from Audit Scotland to Highlands and Islands MSP Mary Scanlon, who has lobbied for an audit. Last night, Mrs Scanlon said she was pleased the audit would be carried out but called on Audit Scotland to carry out a further inquiry into the number of contracts awarded to Rocket Science that did not go through a tendering process.

Maybe, just maybe, the fellow has been above board in his dealings, although his surname DOES sound a bit fishy. 

Queen's Corgis at Risk?

 

It’s been revealed that the owner/occupier of Buckingham Palace, London SW 1V, has seen her bank account plummet from £320 million to a mere £270 million, mainly due to her investment portfolio losing 30% of its value. I’m not sure how she’s going to cope, what with having all those utility bills to pay for, MOTs for Prince Philip’s carriage driving vehicles, and of course, keeping the corgis in the style to which they’ve become accustomed. Maybe she could lease out some of the 52 bedrooms to the hordes who congregate there every day. Failing that, charging £1 to use one of the 78 bathrooms would bring in some much needed pocket money.

I see that a chairperson has been appointed to an independent group to examine the future of bull hire programmes in crofting areas. This group announced a couple of days ago that they were to hold a meeting to see what kind of bulls were most suitable for the crofters. I think it would be a better idea if they were to decide what kind was most suitable for the cows, and I would suggest that they start by deciding that it should definitely be male.

I’ve always been aware of the fact that ants were excellent workers, but I didn’t know until this week that they could carry up to twenty times their own body weight, and move together to move heavier objects. However, it also came to my attention that the South American giant anteater consumes more than 30,000 ants a day, or 210,000 a week.  Although the anteaters’ numbers are estimated to have gone down to about 5,000, that’s still a lot of ants that aren’t going to reach pension age.

Britain’s Dismal Budget

Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, delivered his Budget speech a couple of hours ago, but before I have a quick look at it, I’d better mention Gordon Brown’s announcement yesterday concerning the ongoing row about MPs’ allowances and expenses. A formal statement by Commons’ Leader Harriet Harman revealed MPs may vote within a week on the package. It would scrap the discredited annual £24,000 London housing allowance for MPs’ whose main homes are in their constituencies, including the much-criticised “John Lewis list” of items ranging from fitted kitchens to plasma television screens to bath plugs for which they can claim. Mr Brown plans to sweep away the present system by July 1 and replace it temporarily with one under which MPs would receive a daily allowance based on attendance at Westminster. This might save a few pounds, but it sounds even sillier than the present arrangement. It’s rather similar to me, as a bricklayer, being told by my boss that I was assured of my wage at the end of the week, but that I would be paid expenses if I actually turned up on the building site, and shouted “’Ear, ’Ear” every time anyone else laid a brick or a block. No wonder Britain’s in a mess.

As I mentioned, the so called Budget was delivered earlier this afternoon – I’m not really sure if we can rightly call it a Budget, as there’s nothing in the coffers to budget with. Our fellow in charge at the Treasury, Mr Darling, seems very economical with the truth. During his difficult speech, he mentioned that even now, most people manage to find work within a couple of weeks. Does he honestly think that even the most fervent Labour supporter is going to believe such utter rubbish? A few months ago, he had announced that Britain’s economy would shrink by 1% -- today, his forecast was 3.5%. The Brahan Seer, Coinneach Odhar in Gaelic, was well known in the 17^th century for his prophecies, especially concerning the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. He was reputed to have been born in the Uig district of Lewis, where Alistair Darling now owns land and property, but obviously the gift of accurate foretelling has not rubbed off on him.

Of course, all Labour Governments have been known to run out of money, leaving the Tories to pick up the pieces, but I doubt if any of them have got Britain into the situation that it now finds itself in, as the country has double the debt that it had when Labour came to power. It doesn’t stop there, either, as the Chancellor announced that he would be borrowing a further £348 billion over the next 2 years. We cannot even begin to imagine those figures, as we search for the cheapest tin of baked beans on the supermarket shelves.

The car scrapping scheme, which he also announced this afternoon, is likely to raise, rather than reduce emissions. The carbon costs of manufacturing new cars – and the materials required to produce them – appear to outweigh the savings from driving more efficient models. There is no way, either, of ensuring that folk will buy an economical model of car – they can go to the garage and buy a Mercedes instead of their 2-door Vauxhall Corsa, for example. This scheme is obviously not about the environment or jobs.  It's simply another installment in the history of government subsidies for the motor industry. But in this case it's mostly the car industry in other countries that we'll be supporting, as 85% of our new cars come from abroad. This, to me, is absolutely stupid. The building and civil engineering sectors are those which have lost the biggest percentage of jobs during this recession, but nothing is done to help them. Investment in the construction industry would get hundreds of thousands back into work, because of the extra jobs generated in manufacturing and haulage businesses etc.

I have to stop here, as I need a calming smoke, and Mr Darling will be charging me more for a packet in an hour’s time.      

   

Immoral and Obscene?

In this year of recession, with some families struggling to put a meal on the table, never mind being able to afford their utility bills and mortgages, it seems obscene for thousands to be holding down two or more jobs. Of course, as I mentioned in an earlier post, it’s been happening at the top for years, with guys who are on the Boards of various companies companies etc, but what we should realise is that it’s happening across the whole employment spectrum. I was reminded of it yet again this morning, when I heard a radio show being plugged, along with its new presenter, who earns a good salary already as a teacher. As the show starts whilst he is still supposed to be imparting knowledge to his pupils, obviously the show has been recorded beforehand. It is still on air as he drives home, comfortable in the knowledge that his bank account is being increased, whilst others (some of whom are perfectly able to present the above mentioned radio show) are at home, wondering how they will manage to cope with the next week’s bills. Immoral, unethical? I certainly think so. Remember – he is only one of thousands in this situation.

 

I’m not sure if recession is to blame for the next incident or not. I happened to be at a wedding reception for some 180 guests a couple of weeks ago, and as I hadn’t been out for a meal in the preceding few months, I starved myself all day, in anticipation of a lovely meal being set in front of me. I chose soup for my starter dish – I deliberately haven’t mentioned what type of soup, as I’m still trying to figure that one out. There were about five spoonfuls of coloured water, with some bodies floating about it, which I assumed to be lentils, or something closely related to them. Suffice it to say that I don’t think even Oliver Twist would have asked for a second helping. The service was at snail’s pace, and by the time the main course appeared, I’d nearly forgotten if I’d had the soup or not. I had opted for roast beef – it certainly wasn’t roast, and I’m not too sure if it was beef, as it was nearly impossible to eat. In fact, on first inspection, I thought it hadn’t even paid a visit to the abattoir. The meat was still pink, and so tough that I wished there was a hardware shop nearby where I could purchase a Stanley knife, or maybe a mini hacksaw. The few vegetables accompanying the meat were also very much undercooked, and the gravy looked as if it was the soup, without the lentil lookalikes. I’ve wondered since then if the hotel was trying to save money by cutting down on the cooking times, thus their gas or electricity bills, or was it a case of the chef, if there was one, having arrived late, and dishing out the stuff partially cooked, so that we wouldn’t be having the meal at breakfast time the next morning.

 

Of course, it’s been said that every cloud has a silver lining, and that was true in this case, as there were no post wedding cases of food poisoning reported, seeing folk hadn’t been able to digest anything in the first place.   

 

Scandal in Politics and Football

Because of other commitments, I haven’t been able to write a post to this blog for the past couple of weeks. I’ve kept an eye on the news during that time though, and it’s no surprise that politics, or rather, sleaze in politics, has been the main issue being covered in newspapers, and on TV and radio. As always, commentators and journalists invent a main name for the current scandal, in this case “smear”, then add the inevitable “gate” to it, thus giving us the highly original name, “Smeargate”. Do those guys not realise that the original case in 1972/73, involving President Nixon, was named “Watergate” because it was the actual name of a place, the Watergate Hotel and Office complex. It obviously follows that it simply doesn’t make sense to keep adding “gate” to the name they concoct for any new sleaze story that emerges.

 

Of course, about two weeks ago, we had the infamous “Boozegate” here in Scotland, when two Scotland international football players were deemed to be out of order for still gargling with alcoholic beverages at Sunday lunchtime, after being in the bar from around 4.30am. They might have cleared their throats, but obviously not their minds, as their behaviour at the Scotland-Iceland match on the following Wednesday night showed. As far as I’m concerned, they should not have been named as substitutes for the game, but seeing they were, they should have sat there, looking contrite, and supporting their team mates. They chose instead to flash ‘V’ signs at the photographers, which could also be construed as being offensive gestures to every Scottish fan. Obviously, this was not done on the spur of the moment by two individuals – that would be too much of a coincidence, and as I don’t think either of them has the intellect necessary to think of carrying out those actions, I keep wondering if someone involved with the media masterminded the whole thing. In any case, the whole episode proved beyond doubt that we have a bunch of bungling idiots running the Scottish Football Association, who don’t need to be in a bar for 7 hours in order to come to some crazy decisions.

 

I’ve referred to Jade Goody before now in this blog, and after her death last month, I hoped that the media hype concerning her would have stopped by now – that she would be remembered best for the awareness of cervical cancer that her illness prompted. Not so, I’m afraid. Jack Tweed, who got married to her a few weeks before she died, has been jailed again, this time for assaulting a taxi driver. Only last Friday, he was pictured leaving a giant Cadbury’s crème egg at her graveside. It might have been her favourite treat, but she’s gone Jack. Before becoming a resident at one of the Queen’s residences, it’s reported that he also visited Madame Tussaud’s, for talks about immortalising her as a waxwork. It seems that Jade had said that she’d love to have a statue made of her, especially as it would help her sons to remember her. I don’t think they’ll bother to amble into Madame Tussaud’s every day, but I’m sure that a photo in the wallet would serve the purpose, and I somehow don’t think it would cost as much either.