Leader's repaid expenses

Is it just me or is there a clear message here on repayed expenses ?

One party leader is at least 1386% large than the others. Could this be the man who ran the nation's finances into the ditch ? Oh yes ...

H/T to the Lib Dem cynical bar chart dept - but boys notice this one is scaled correctly ....

Is the establishment trying to get even with Nadine Dorries ?

Ever since Nadine Dorries became more than Jack Straw's favourite blogger by leading the case against late abortion she's been a marked woman.

She is an effective advocate of her cause, and a strong representative of her constituency. She also has the common touch, perhaps because she has a hinterland of experience which is just so lacking, especially amongst the career politicians on the Labour benches.

Hence perhaps her being singled out for the unpleasant attacks in the McPoison Red Reg scandal in No 10. Just the sort of bullying that has been handed out to many opponents of No 10.

More recently the media ( see BBC ) have started using a very unflattering picture of her partially blinded by sun light. She's a striking woman who photographs a lot better than that unless you have malicious intent to make her look bad.

She has upset No 10 by demanding an apology in PMQs when she over came the Speaker's resitance to put a question directly to Gordon Brown. She is also taking legal action against Gordon Brown's former right hand man Damian McBride.

Yes her card has been marked all right.

So tonight we have the news that the Daily Telegraph is going after her. This is the Daily Telegraph that tipped of No 10 about the McPoison emails, despite giving assurances to Guido that it would do no such thing.

Am I the only one to find all this just a little suspect ?

However, I have to admit her explanation on the second home allowance isn't water tight as it stands. Perhaps mistakes have been made. We will find out when David Cameron's review of his MPs expenses produces its results.

Given what must have been considerable disruption to her personal life from her split with her husband in 2006, perhaps mistakes have been made. But I find it very hard to believe that she has deliberately been deceitful. I find it far easier to believe that the establishment has seen its chance to get even. Nadine has been just the sort of MP this country needs and I for one will be very sorry if she has slipped up or this damages her.

Update: I seem to have some problem linking to specific posts in Nadine's blog, so I hope it will be OK to cut and paste her post today (16th May 09). The attitude of the Daily telegraph in all this is looking more and more suspect all the time !

Copied from Nadine's blog post 16 May 09 titled "The Other place" ( highlighting is my own)



I had hoped that I could retain some of my private life and keep it just that, private. It appears that this is now impossible.




The Telegraph has every right to ask questions and to hold politicians to account for the way they spend public money. But their reaction when I told them I would publish my response to their allegations on my blog was revealing. It appears that the general public is only entitled to hear the Telegraph’s version of the truth if they pay for a copy of the Telegraph. They also felt it necessary to phone CCHQ with veiled threats about what they could do to me in the future if I dared to post the letter they sent to me on my blog before they published their own article in today’s newspaper. I am afraid that the Telegraph doesn’t appear to get the ‘new media’. If anyone is going to publish anything about me, I will do it myself, first.





Yes I do claim for my second home in Bedfordshire using my ACA. I rent it. I never felt comfortable buying using tax payers money.




I felt it very necessary that I should commute from my constituency to London on work days with the rest of my constituents, in the cattle truck trains, in the jams and delays even though I leave early in the morning and don’t arrive home most days until gone midnight, long after my fellow morning commuters are in bed.




But, yes, I do have another home. It was where I went to after I had finished my Parliamentary and constituency work and changed into a mother and looked after my girls. I lived in my main family Cotswold home until my marriage broke down in 2007. The family home was then sold. I then rented a home in the Cotswolds where my daughter went to school and where my ex husband looked after her from Monday to Thursday during school and Parliamentary term time. He then moved out before I arrived back and spent his time with a significant other and I stayed in the home, which I paid for from my own money. Sometimes, on the very late week nights I stay in London, at my own expense.




During Parliamentary recesses, when I am not in the constituency or the Cotswolds, I take my girls abroad. The rest of the time during weekends I finished work and spent my time in the Cotswolds preparing the week’s meals for my daughter, washing and ironing school uniforms, changing sheets, checking homework, and leaving to drive back to Bedfordshire when she was in bed late on a Sunday night when I had finished packing her school and PE bag and hanging the week’s uniforms on her wardrobe door, just before my ex husband came back to take over.




I never wanted my constituents to think that I had another prime responsibility other than Bedfordshire and Parliament; maybe I should have been more open.





My daughter was due to start boarding school in September but instead she started at a school in Bedford. At the weekends we go back to the Cotswolds together, or, if I have to work such as this weekend, we stay in Bedfordshire.





During the Parliamentary term time, it is unusual for me not to have a constituency engagement.




I spend more nights away from my constituency home than I spend in it and I use it for the purpose of my work. I do, however, retain the right to have my daughter, or daughter’s with me depending on who is with me at the time. It may only be a second home, however, it is a home.




So, to my constituents and no one else, I am sorry. My crime is that I haven’t owned up to you that I don’t always live here – that I have a private life, which has not always run smoothly. I couldn’t work harder for Bedfordshire than I already do - I have given it almost every day of my life since you elected me. In politics, my constituency always comes first, but in my private life my family does. I can’t apologise for that. What sort of person would I be if I did?





By trying to protect my girls and keeping the circumstances of my marriage break up private and the arrangements for looking after my youngest daughter in the family, I realise that I am in fact arousing suspicion.




I don’t have much more to say other than the posting of this blog will humiliate my daughters, but what else can I do? I have to make sure people understand that not everyone has a life which runs to plan. It really isn’t always a wonderful life and as a mother you just have to do what you have to do.

Somebodies will no doubt go through Nadine's claims for expenses and allowances with a fine tooth comb, but it doesn't seem to me that she was enriching herself or costing the tax payer excess costs. In another time the sisterhood would have stood up for her as a working mother, but that's before she stood up for children terminated after 20 months gestation.

Further - Dizzy Thinks gives his view on why renting was a honourable thing for Nadine to do.

Monday 18th DT goes with an article saying Nadine Dorries apologises to her constituents - looks to me like they are trying to justify themselves here....

Surely we're in resignation country by now ?

In the good old days when many gullible voters believed that Labour would be whiter than white did young Peter Mandelson have to resign (the first time) about being forgetful on a mortgage and when it was revealed that he had borrowed money to buy a house from Geoffrey Robinson, a minister whose affairs were under investigation by Mr Mandelson’s department.

On this scale surely Elliot Morley should be applying for the Chiltern Hundreds for claiming for a mortgage he didn't have ? ( And Brown should remove the Labour whip first )

Out in the real world social services take people to crown court for this sort of forgetfulness ....

The Rot

I've been away for a few days on a family wedding and have watch the revelations via my mobile phone with growing disquiet.

For those people who engage in politics the revelations on expenses are alarming but perhaps not surprising.

The army of local activists of all parties are going to get sick of hearing at the door step that all politicians are crocks, and a significant proportion of those who turn up at the ballot box will vote for parties that they think will annoy the establishment the most.

If we had a PR system, then I think you'd be looking at an Italian / Canadian scale changing of the political guard.

None of the major parties is going to come out well from this, although currently it is perhaps Labour who will suffer the most. ( Although given revelations about the shadow cabinet are due that can be by no means certain. )

We have a system where by the new political class, who are apt at playing the part of our representatives are able to deceive many of us.

I've just spend a few happy days in the world without national politics that is a family wedding, and its just depressing to look back into all this.

None of us know if politicians we admire, have campaigned for or supported will shortly be shown to have taken the tax payer for a ride. few of those of us who are volunteers can have anything other than a sick feeling in our stomachs.

The events that are reported are serious, disturbing and even revolting. But, but they are only a symptom of a deeper problem in the way we try to democratically govern ourselves.

"New Labour" is at the root of this problem. "The Project", "The Narrative", spin and of course lies deceit and triangulation.

The attempt to deal and manipulate peoples knowledge of the situation by controlling the media, emoting, using "sound bites" and political cross dressing.

What all those things have in common is a lack of moral integrity, unless you subscribe perhaps to the conceit of the left that only they are holy and have receipt of all wisdom and hence are justified in any actions, however reprehensible to destroy those who disagree with them.

Whilst Labour has lead on most of this, the other two main parties, including the Conservatives, cannot escape blame here. Defining yourself in opposition to your party's membership has become the standard trick of the trade of every new party leader. The poison of new Labour has spread to the wider body of politics.

I suspect Labour have suffered more as many of those who are at the top of the Labour party now went into politics believing something quite different from what the claim now. Having lost that integrity, its perhaps no surprise that they should lose moral integrity also, in the same way they trade political and intellectual integrity for power.

The test that comes now is how much shame those who have selected themselves to rule us now show. One of the abiding characteristics of the current government and Blair's before it was the shamelessness is showed.

Underlying all this is the need to stop politics continuing as a profession and a profitable one at that.

We need term limits and upper limits on the total amount of money any elected representative can ever receive from the tax payer.

We need men and women who see public service as a noble sacrifice not a career.

PS We should perhaps consider that dishonesty has become wide spread in our society. Many people lie on their CVs and embellish their expenses. There is a mirror here of our wider society if we can stand to look into it.

I realise I don't yet have a fully formed central thesis in this post, but I'm going to publish as its time to say at least something.

Kevan Jones MP's sudden love of freedom of information

Now that MPs expenses are being racked through ( not a bad thing ) there are going to be a series of embarrassing revelations.

Today the BBC, to its glee, has Caroline Spelman in its sights for paying an employee who was also a Nanny from parliamentary expenses. ( See gloating at BBC here , the BBC certainly didn't make such a fuss of Labour ministers high expenses for gardens, food etc ).

Newsnight is claiming the scope - perhaps it just shows they know how to answer the phone eh ? One Kevan Jones MP is apparently insisting, and being helpfully quoted by the BBC, that this is referred to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. He gets the words "Clearly, old habits die hard in the Tory Party despite what their leader says" in.

Mr Jones doesn't strike me as a man who has an excess of initiative so we can assume he's been put up to it. (Why would anyone ask his opinion anyway ?) Perhaps the real assassin doesn't want his/her hands - and bitten finger nails - muddied with such things.

Here Mr Jones voting record on freedom of information: ( From http://www.publicwhip.org.uk )

Kevan Jones MP, North Durham

voted strongly against the policy

Freedom of Information - Apply to Parliament

by scoring 3.7% compared to the votes below

• Summary
• Full description
• Policy comparisons

House	Date	Subject	Agreement
Commons	20 Apr 2007	Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill — MPs' expenses	absent
Commons	20 Apr 2007	Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill — Exemption of Parliament	absent
Commons	18 May 2007	Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill — Question Proposed	disagree
Commons	18 May 2007	Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill — MP's correspondence	disagree
Commons	18 May 2007	Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill — Constituent letters	disagree
Commons	18 May 2007	Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill — Third Reading — Closure	disagree
Commons	18 May 2007	Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill — Third Reading	disagree

He's votes for many other draconian anti freedom policies like ID cards and 42day internment without charge. He hates freedom of information in parliament but is happy to use it when its handed to him. Apparently he thinks there's no need for a public inquiry into the Iraq war - at least its the way he voted, but there is into the child care arrangements of an MP. I'm glad he's not my MP.

I find it hard to believe he's on a one man mission fuelled by his individual initiative.

The real story behind all this is how this 'revelation' was revealed and the motives of the man who did it. Dirty negative campaigning - now who's been up to that sort of thing recently ?

Update: Iain Dale has some timely background information for those who wish to condemn Caroline Spelman.

Conservative home, Centre Rights' Greg Hand, is zeroing in on Kevin Jones and his associations.