It appears that the Noble and Rt Hon Lord Paul of Marylebone in the City of Westminster has been designating a flat that he owns, but has never actually slept in, not once, as his main home. I’m not sure how that works. I guess if you’re a bit of a lad, it might be, just might be, that you never, never sleep at your main home....wink wink, know what I mean....? But the Noble Lord is actually 78 years old. Now call me ageist if you will, but I really doubt that he’s with a different lady (or lad) every night at that age.....
Furthermore, one of his hotel managers lives in the flat (yeah... I forgot to tell you that bit.... his nobleness owns hotels.... don’t it just make you want to laugh?) He reckons that, if he wanted to stay there overnight he could simply move his manager out. Phew, he sounds like a nice bloke then.
By saying his main home was his manager’s flat in Oxfordshire, he was able to claim cash allowances which are available only to peers who live outside the capital. Allowances that total around £38,000.
Last week Paul argued that he had been entitled to claim the flat was his home as it was “available” for his use. He said he could have moved the manager out for the night if he stayed there, but he never did so. “I don’t say that I stayed the night — I said that it was available to me,” he said. (I quote this from the Sunday Times)
The SNP’s Angus Robertson is writing to the police and the House of Lords authorities about the matter... although, with it the headlines in the Sunday Times, I guess that maybe both organizations may have got a whiff of this already.
Lord Paul of blah blah blah..., who is a Deputy Speaker of the House of peers and sitting on a fortune of around £500,000,000, is a close friend of Gordon Brown and his wife. But although he’s a smart cookie when it comes to getting dosh off us, he was fiddled rotten by old Brown himself.... He apparently gave £45,000 to Brown’s leadership campaign. Leadership campaign? What leadership campaign? Why would that have cost £45,000?
It’s sad that when we are faced with cuts all around to pay off the horrendous debt incurred in the in the “end of boom and bust” bust, caused by crass incompetence and greed of the government and the financial authorities, that the people who were closest to this incompetence should still be able to rake in £38,000 in fiddled expenses.
He's worth half a billion but still fiddles the expenses? These people make me sick.
ReplyDeleteScunnert.
ReplyDeleteIt's incredible. When you think of what the government that he supports in the Lords has done to the poorest people, it is just sickening.
There has to be some sort of clearing out in the House of Lords, 700+ of them. What on earth do we need them for? America has a Senate of 100 people to cover 50 states. By that token the UK only needs 8 of them... and if we only need 8 let's just get rid of them altogehter.
Scotland doesn't have a house of Lords. Legislation passed in Edinburgh just goes to the Head of State to be signed and becomes law. We're none the worse for that.
It seems these people have been benefit cheats for far too long.
Cut them loose! Let the English pay for them if they wish, (and I actually think they would!)
ReplyDeleteBut let's not be too shocked, this government was re-elected twice. Plenty of time and opportunity to get to know them, and none of this is too surprising. What they have created in the House of Lords is an absolute monster, all these appointed Life Peers with no way to resign their seats? Stuck there for life, security of tenure that no-one else in the country enjoys...
I'm giving myself a panic attack...
Sophia:
ReplyDeleteWell, really the English should pay for them. They have little to do with us. We don't need them and most of them don't work for us. So you're right.
You're right too about the monster that they have created. If they have to have a second house in England it should be largely, if not wholly, elected but they won't move forward.
Other countries manage with elected second chambers so why is it that England couldn't? Silly question maybe.
My particular hate is the GOAT lords, given a seat there in order to do a job as a minister, and then a year or so later they resign the minister job and keep the social status of being an aristocrat, and the expenses, until they bloody die!!!! And, worst of all, they were all bloody hopeless! My granny's cat could have done a better job, and it's been dead the best part of 20 years!
Lordy... I'm having a panick attack too....
Tris, so long as we remain part of the Onion we do pay for them. There are still far too many reserved issues (all of them in fact) the macro-economics, defence etc which their Lordships have a say in. If a second chamber is required, and I'm not so sure it is, it has to be elected, for a country to be considered a democracy.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't mind living in a democracy, it might be quite nice.
I agree completely Sophia. Maybe you will one day, and without having to move an inch.
ReplyDelete