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Saturday 21 November 2009

According to Smith and McNulty, MPs, not taxpayers, are the victims of the expenses scandal

Saturday, 31st October 2009

You have to admire the magnificent, brazen, blank-faced nerve of Jacqui Smith - the former Home Secretary who could not be entirely sure where her home was. Appearing on Question Time on Thursday, her demeanour flitted between confected contrition and self-righteous indignation – always, at the end of every sentence, coming to rest on the latter. Jacqui, you will recall, claimed that her second home was her proper four-bedroomed family home in her constituency, Redditch, and that her main home was a room rented in her sister’s house. She did this in order to get more money from the taxpayer – as a consequence she was required to apologise to the House of Commons (not to you or me, from where the money came), but not told to pay a single penny back, or suffer any other form of censure. Sporting a new hair colour (Midnight Auburn, by L’Oreal, I think – because you’re worth it, Jacqui. No, you really are. The taxpayers have probably paid for that too – we’d better check the receipts) she smirked her way through questions about her expenses claims and twice deliberately misled the public. First when she suggested that the House of Commons authorities had accepted that she spent more time in London than in Redditch – they didn’t, they were very clear that she spent many more nights in her proper home in Redditch between 2007-2009 – of course she spent more “time” in London, it’s where she worked. And secondly when she implied that the taxpayers hadn’t lost out on her arrangement – we did, because she couldn’t have claimed at all on her sister’s house, so we lost out to the tune of about £30,000.

But tellingly, she was supported in all this by her opposition colleagues on the Question Time panel. First by the brunette-bonking comet-dodging weirdo Lembit Opik, who expected you to pay his police fines. And also by the Tory’s Cheryl Gillan, who expected you to pay for her bloody dog food. For her dogs, not for her. She doesn’t eat dog food, at least not in public. The dogs are now dead, by the way, so that should save us a few bob. Anyway, they were all agreed, these three – Smith, Opik, Gillan – that the expenses business was a real scandal, quite disgraceful, really can’t carry on like this any more, how we have all let you, the voters, down. But they cheerfully exculpated each other from individual blame, suggesting that the fault lay purely in the system. No need for further recrimination on an individual basis: hey, we’ve seen enough, it’s grim – but for the good of democracy, let’s move on, no?

This is the way it is going. I remember two Tory MPs talking (privately) in the summer about how grotesque this public outrage about expenses was and how they needed to “circle the wagons”. Well, the wagons have been well and truly circled. Circled around Tony McNulty, for a start; the former minister at the department for work and pensions fibbed about his second home too – he said it was where his parents lived and claimed more than £70,000 from the taxpayer to subsidise their housing. He has been asked to pay back £13,000 because the Commons authorities – with the same generosity they showed to Mrs Smith – accepted he stayed at his mum and dad’s house sometimes. About one night in five, according to Mr McNulty’s own records. And if you believe those you’ll believe anything. He doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong; not technically, not morally, not legally. Are you waiting for the first prosecution, or maybe even the first de-selection? Don’t hold your breath. They have managed to spin this whole business into a strange and surreal place where Jacqui Smith and Tony McNulty are the victims, rather than you.

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Lupus Lungfish

October 31st, 2009 1:28pm

Those with their slippery fingers on the purse strings usually end up helping themselves. Whether its the thieves in Westminster or the criminals down the road in the City. Same old story, human nature I'm afraid.

Dave B

October 31st, 2009 2:28pm

I thought Guido (Sunlight Centre for Open Politics) had started a private prosecution of Ms Smith for fraud. Not so?

Moraymint

October 31st, 2009 2:40pm

Rod, you may have had your proverbial tongue in cheek when calling in that other blog you wrote for a spot of civil disobedience.

Sod that.

I'm up for Peasants' Revolt II.

I really can't take any more of this for much longer. Where's Wat Tyler when you need him? Oh, I know ... he's over on "Burning Our Money" (http://tinyurl.com/wkwtf)

Rod, Wat and Moraymint - "All for one, and one for all". Let's do it chaps. Time to storm Parliament and hand the United Kingdom back to its good citizens.

See you down the pub.

Carl

October 31st, 2009 3:45pm

The sooner honest and decent people realise that these troughing pigs just don't care, the better. We need to jail a few of them to set an example to the others. I doubt any country has more corrupt and dishonest politicians than the UK has.

Michael Booth

October 31st, 2009 7:18pm

OK without getting into abuse, bad language or unreason, I for one am appalled that our democracy has sunk to such a low ebb, that politicians have grown so used to being unchallenged they think the British public are there simply to feed off. I am angry that rules which are applied to the rest of us are not applied to MPs. I am disgusted by Jacqui Smith's behaviour and contempt for the people who put her into Parliament, and I am outraged that the apologies demanded were not addressed to the nation. So... what redress do we have? We have been defrauded, lied to, cheated... how can this be put right? But having said all of that, what really sticks in the craw is that, whilst they have been ripping us all off, they have been nodding through legislation that is at best shoddy and at worst authoritarian, happily allowing civil liberties to be thrown aside in the interests of 'national security' or whatever. I am ashamed to be British - but then, from the way that they behave, so are the majority of our Common Purpose politicos.

David Ossitt

October 31st, 2009 7:19pm

Rod Liddle

You made no mention of the other MP on the panel; Elfyn Llwyd of Plaid Cymru, the barrister.

You might remember that he confided with the audience; that some of the expenses miscreants will go to prison, when asked how many, his reply was two or three.

I realise that we can’t expect hundreds but surely twenty to fifty heads should roll?

Olaf Rye

October 31st, 2009 7:47pm

When you consider how poorly public finances are administered by this government and this generation of politician, is there any wonder that the MPs expenses are such a scandalous mess ? Outright venality is one thing, but listening to the MPs explain themselves just demonstrates that they feel entitled to this money and are so conceited that they believe that they deserve it for the work that the put in ! It is an obscenity--most of these specimens of human flotsam and jetsam could not hold a position outside the rarefied atmosphere of politics and the civil service. Such self-indulgent, conceited and stupid beings.

rod seacole liddle

October 31st, 2009 7:52pm

He said "two or three", yes - but he still stuck up for Jacqui Smith. I reckon your estimate is closer to the truth.

logdon

October 31st, 2009 8:11pm

Last weeks QT hit a new low.

Forget the synthetic circus of the Griffin show, this was the bent 'normalcy' of these cretins in full flow.

Had they inserted a Hislop, Starkey, Phillips or a Liddle the show would have followed a different trajectory.

As it stood they got a free ride.

EC

October 31st, 2009 9:57pm

... and the carefully screened QT audience sat quietly and said nothing?

Anne Wotana Kaye

October 31st, 2009 10:36pm

Yes, and go around a prison and speak to the inmates. They are all innocent and everyone has been framed.

Dixon

November 1st, 2009 12:28am

Never mind that. Wheres your blog on the Prof Nutt resigns fandango? Arent you incensed at the way a bunch of amateur pot-smoking "advisors" lead by a West Country fatty are getting hissy because they arent allowed to dictate policy?

Baron Pipin II

November 1st, 2009 1:02am

OK, let’s say that a hundred will get the collar felt (David Ossitt), and Secole and Hislop and Phillips and Moore will get on the QT each week (Logdon). That’s it. Hurrah. The problem’s solved, Britain turns Great again.

rod seacole liddle

November 1st, 2009 11:14am

Uh-oh Dixon, I don't think you're going to like this:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rod_liddle/article6898190.ece

David

November 1st, 2009 11:58am

This brilliant article sums up exactly my frustrated rage at what's happening.

What can be done about it except getting rid of the scum at the next election? Answer: nothing, they're utterly shameless.

Here's hoping for a wonderful night come 6 May 2010 when the ducking-stools and tumbrels can be brought out, and a form of justice done.

anne allan

November 1st, 2009 12:00pm

The collusion in the expenses scandal cuts across party lines. Local associations have been warned to back off. To coin a phrase, 'they're all in this together'.
Great recruiting ploy I don't think.

anne allan

November 1st, 2009 12:10pm

This expenses scandal cuts across party lines: we have a political elite colluding in their disdain for the taxpayer. Tories cosy up to Lib.Dems, Labour exchange nods and winks with Plaid Cymri - they are all, to coin a phrase, 'in this together'.
Local associations are warned to back off, which doesn't encourage recruiting new new members or even retaining the old ones.

Lupus Lungfish

November 1st, 2009 12:32pm

Whilst living on the Oxford canal at Wolvercote several years ago two of my near neigbours had both lost limbs due to intravenous heroin use. Heroin had cost them an arm and a leg. Both of them were in a complete mess and one of them couldn't even get it together enough to sign on and in the end managed to set fire to his boat. Of course booze can have similar results and is perhaps more physically damaging - its all a matter of degree isn't it.

Dixon

November 1st, 2009 3:30pm

Er, thanks Rod, I' look at that with trepidation and hope theyve a divvy box to put mine in.

Meanwhile, theres another weird aspect of this MNulty and Smith story that seems to have ben overlooked. Ministers who still live at their parents house! Ministers who live on their sisters ( so to speak ) sofa!

What kind of retarded people are they?

Lungfish

November 1st, 2009 4:01pm

My previous post looks a bit incongruous, suddenly butting in and prattling about hardcore smack abuse when the topic is Jaqui's bathroom plug and McNulty's Mum and Dads living arrangements etc. Sorry I'd just read Rod's article in the Times and forgot where I was.

Baron Pipin II

November 1st, 2009 5:45pm

Lungfish @ 4.01

Lungfish, you of the Chordata phylum, rest assured you aren’t the only one lost amongst us. We ‘re all swimming in the sea of blissful confusion and foggy bewilderment, plodding on rudderless, but for the attachment to the newly discovered epicurean desires of the instant kind, and to the abundance of ‘Uman rights entitlements. You just put your feathery appendages up and indulge in whatever it may be that makes you happy in the enlightened Britain of the 21st century. And please, no apology. A discredited, pretentious, and so no-cool outpouring of feelings of guilt, that.

workie unwaged ticket

November 1st, 2009 8:01pm

I've got a soft spot for McNulty who came out with the funniest quip this year in response to the extra million or so unemployed they and their banker friends have created. He said his JobCentre staff 'stood ready' to help the unemployed get back to work in any way they could. He obviously hasnt been in many lately. Most JC staff would have trouble helping each other cross the road.

Aequitas

November 1st, 2009 8:44pm

Just lie back Workie, watch Groundhog Day on the telly and try and forget about it!

workie ticket

November 3rd, 2009 8:49am

McNulty living with his parents and Smith with her sister. Sounds like ideal bail conditions to me.

Aequitas

November 7th, 2009 2:11am

That'll be the day Workie

KateA

November 17th, 2009 2:37am

Carl: 'I doubt any country has more corrupt and dishonest politicians than the UK has.'

Friend you should live in Ireland. Your crowd are mere amateurs! 100,000 Euro on limos, 900Euro overnight in top hotels from S. Africa to Australia to the good ole USA and anywhere else in between.

Fat Harney, minister of health, 700,000 Euro using the government jet to fly herself and hubby all over the world on important government business - health conferences - Ireland has a third world health service which Harney has NO accountability for. Too busy attending health conferences while thousands lie on trolleys in filthy hospitals every day.

Oh no, people your don't know the meaning of corrupt government.