Lord Falkland's wife's aunt's homeIt wouldn’t be the weekend if there wasn’t a nice wee story about another upper class fraudster with a housing benefit story to tell. This one is, at least in some ways, slightly different from the rest.
So far we have covered the stories of Life Peers, little men and women who have managed, by hook or by crook, to get themselves a seat in the Lords and pinch a pot of money from us. There are those who have blamed it all on letting little oinks into the Upper House. Real aristos wouldn’t do that sort of thing, they said .
Well, just to prove that little theory wrong, meet The Fifteenth Viscount Falkland, one of 90 hereditary peers still sitting in the Lords. And this time not a Labour or Conservative, but Liberal Democrat peer. He’s had a fine little number going on for a good while now.
It seems that despite living in Clapham, he has registered as his main home, a two bedroom oast house in Kent which, wait for it, he doesn’t even own! By doing this, he has neatly managed to avail himself of an estimated £200,000 of our tax pounds.
Lucius Edward William Plantagenet Cary (nice name) has been claiming this money for at least a decade. He and his wife bought their London House in 1990 with no mortgage and both are on the electoral role there, and use it as an address for their company directorships. Neighbours say they are rarely away.
Neighbours at the oast house, which is actually owned by the Viscountess’s aunt, have never heard of them, or seen them.
It refreshing that the not terribly Noble Lord says quite openly that he doesn’t live there, but that it was in the rules that he could do it. “I didn’t do it to make the money”, he says. “I did it to meet the expenses of my life. I don’t have any other income.”
Awwwwwwwwwwwww! Poor wee scone. Has he forgotten about the directorships?
Here’s my advice to Your Lordship. Go to the Department of Work and Pensions, tell them that you are now 74 years old and that you want your state pension. They will arrange a payment of around £100 a week for you to say thank you for working all these years. If you're lucky and budget carefully you may be able to feed yourself and keep warm, although the odds are against it. But it’s good enough for other people, so why would it not be good enough for you?
I love that picture of him in the Daily Mail: he looks very expansive. And her, well she looks like she is several sheets into the wind; love the hair. It’s clearly a lush life at our expense, triples all round.
ReplyDeleteYes Munguin:
ReplyDeleteFor someone who is as poor as he says he is, he certainly doesn't look like he's gone short of the odd meal and you're right, she looks half cut.
But then, on the kind of money that they are embezzling, I suppose they can have a good night down the pub.
Yet more scandal. Right Tris, Munguin which of you is going to do a Fawkes and blow this rotten lot up in Parliament?
ReplyDeleteCome on now, one of you has to! :)
Oh Dean... what a temptation, but knowing me I'd blow them up on a day that no one was there...
ReplyDeleteIt's sickening though isn't it. A man like that thinks that it is ok to subsidise his old age pension with our money.... utterly sickening. Blowing him up in parliament is too good for him.
Looking at that picture of his wife in the Mail, I have an idea that a naked flame anywhere in her vicinity would cause a huge explosion!!!! Don't you think? :-)