THERE IS SOMETHING ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF WESTMINSTER

WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER , YOU KNOW

Does anyone know why these people's backsides don't seem to fit on bus seats? Are aristocrats made differently from us plebs?

LET'S COME DOWN REALLY HARD ON SCROUNGERS

It should be noted that Mr Duncan Smith can live in £53 a week...
One breakfast and £124 worth of sundries...
So I'm sure you'll find that he doesn't claim this food allowance.
Will someone please tell me why I am subsiding 650 MPs on top of their salaries,
 while an OAP gets £112  + or -!

Under the Commons additional costs allowance, MPs were allowed to claim up to £400 for food every month – £4,800 a year – without having to submit receipts. 

That is until they abused the system and were caught and shamed by the Daily Telegraph for stealing vast amounts of taxpayers' money. 

This allowance has since been replaced with a flat-rate sum of £25 "for any night which a member spends away from his or her main home on parliamentary business". 

I'm not sure how they make that £160 a week.

However, on the basis that they may be away for between 4 and 7 nights a week that comes to between £100 and £175 a week.

MPs claimed £1m in food expenses last year | Politics | guardian.co.uk

HOW TO MAKE ONE AND A HALF MILLION AND PAY BACK £5,800

He he he... I got away with it

Tory MP Maria Miller claimed nearly a hundred thousand pounds in expenses for a second home she hardly used and then moved her parents into it, to live for free at the tax payers’ expense. Miller a supporter of the Bedroom Tax also claimed for food and furniture, council tax, telephone and TV licence for the property.

Scot free, because I'm an important person

She was told off but cleared of the most serious charges and ordered to pay back just over five thousand pounds even though she was criticised for her "attitude" to the inquiry, which pretty much means she lied and obstructed the commissioner. There are allegations that the press was warned to back off by both her own staff and Downing Street, by being reminded that it was miller who was overseeing press regulation.

But David Cameron said  that Miller was doing an excellent job and that people should just leave it at that. 

It is a pity that we all cannot be tried by a parliamentary inquiry for our wrong doings because the prisons would be empty, as we all said sorry for stealing and lying. 

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards recommended that she he made to pay back £45,000 of stolen money, but MPs on the Commons Standards Committee overruled the recommendations and let her off with £5,800 payback and a 30 second apology. 

Miller has since sold the property on which she made such a killing for a £1.2 million profit. So she'll not be worrying too much about her old age.

But don't get the idea that you could get away with it.
You're just oinks

People thought that the expenses scandal was a thing of history but more and more it seems that they have simply found craftier ways of stealing. They didn't go into politics to be thwarted by the likes of you and me.

AND YET ANOTHER PIECE OF SCROUNGING DETRITUS...

WHAT ARE THESE PEOPLE LIKE?

Baker, whose wealth is estimated at £3.9m

MPs have been labelled hypocritical for using £64,000 of taxpayers’ money to subsidise their children’s visits to their second homes after voting for the bedroom tax.

Under the bedroom tax more than 600,000 social tenants with one or more spare rooms must either move or pay an average £14-a-week penalty.

A single parent who is not a child’s main carer will not receive extra housing benefit to cover the cost of a spare bedroom to allow the child to stay overnight.

But MPs who want their children to visit their London residence can claim extra money from their accommodation allowance to cover the costs of accommodating them, providing the child ‘routinely resides’ with them.

What qualifies as ‘routinely residing’ is up to the MP’s discretion, so they will still be eligible for the extra money if their children visit just once a month, under rules laid down by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.

The scheme was branded as the ‘ultimate hypocrisy’ by Lucy Ferman, project manager for Placeshapers - an alliance of 100 housing associations.

In the 2011/12 financial year, 29 MPs who voted for the bedroom tax claimed additional expenses for the cost of dependants over and above the standard £20,100 accommodation allowance they were entitled to, costing the taxpayer £63,819.

In the same period, a further 20 who did not vote for the legislation claimed £36,864.

Nigel Adams

Conservative MP Nigel Adams, who accused the BBC of having a ‘preconceived agenda’ over its bedroom tax coverage, claimed £6,735 for costs related to dependants. He did not comment.

Climate change minister Greg Barker claimed an extra £3,313 for costs related to his dependants. His office said the claims were ‘fully compliant with IPSA rules’.

But the Northern Housing Consortium said MPs should consider whether the guidelines were still ‘right and proper’ in light of the bedroom tax policy - adding tenants would be ‘upset and angry’ that MPs did not face the same restrictions as them.

Crossbench peer Lord Richard Best said it was important that MPs had the space for their children to visit. ‘What we object to is that other people don’t. They have a penalty for having space.’

So, what we are saying is that the housing allowance for ordinary people, be they elderly, sick, disabled, or whatever, does not allow for part time usage by children, but housing allowance for the special kind of people that make up Westminster representatives does?  

Well, that's fair!

THE "NOBLE" HANNINGFIELD STILL FILLING HIS BOOTS AT OUR EXPENSE

Lord Hanningfield has defended claiming more than £21,000 in daily allowances despite not speaking during any House of Lords debate since his release from prison.

His "nobleness" , who was jailed for nine months in July 2011 after being found guilty of fiddling his expenses, says he is intentionally keeping a low profile.

He served just a few weeks and was released in September 2011, returning to the House of Lords last April.

Records show that since then he's not spoken in any debate or tabled a written question and still managed to "legitimately" claim £21,000 in allowances and £1,736 in travel costs. What, you might ask, has he been doing for all that money? The answer would probably be ... nothing much.

Members of the Lords can claim a £300 daily allowance and travel costs, all tax free. In November last year alone the noble Hanningfield claimed £5,100 in daily allowances and a further £407 in travel costs – £361 on train fares and the rest on taxis and parking.

Colchester MP, Sir Bob Russell, criticised the noble Baron's recent record, saying that although he was not breaking any rules it was a “slap in the face” for the taxpayer.

He said: “It’s quite extraordinary that having been sent to prison for fiddling his expenses he should then return to the scene of the crime and claim £300 every time he goes through the door as if it is some game of Monopoly."

Hanningfield, who was made a Life Peer (Baron Hanningfield of Chelmsford) in 1998, said he had been advised by friends to “keep a relatively low profile” in a bid to avoid negative headlines following his release from prison, but he was hoping to become more active in the Lords very soon.

He said: “I want to get involved in some committees. I’m working on it. It’s very much dependent on what the Lords put you on. I’m gradually building my career up again.”

Don't they make you laugh, these people?

If you want to keep a low profile matey, a good way to do this would NOT to be claiming thousands of pounds of our money for sitting on your fat backside doing sod all for more than most people who have never been convicted of fraud, and never spent time at Her Majesty's pleasure, can ever dream of.

Just a word of advice... I expect you won't bother taking it.

A RUB OVER WITH A DIRTY CLOTH: THAT WAS THE CLEAN UP THAT BRITISH POLITICS GOT

Despite a promise, from all the large UK parties, that politics would be cleaned up, in an effort to give us confidence in our, erm, “masters”, it appears to me that nothing much has changed.

Yes, there are a few of the troughing pigs facing a trial, but far too few, and almost none from the so-called upper house, where it seems that the rules allow for fiddling.

Mr Cameron, in an effort before the election, to appear tough on fiddling and tough on the fiddlers, seems to have backtracked a little, and now that all that horrid nonsense about cash for peerages has faded into the background, some of the people who were turned down last time have found their greasy way to the red benches, so that for the rest of their lives they can join the select few who are entitled!

Cameron also came to the election with plans to change the House of Lords, one of the most ridiculous concoctions in the Western world, particularly for a country that finds itself lecturing anyone who will listen on “democracy”. Somewhat bizarrely then the change that he presents is, well, the addition of a further 50 members, meaning that the total membership will now be over 750.

It’s just as well this country is just bursting at the seams with cash, for each of these people is entitled to well over £300 a day, for just turning up. When you think that the retirement pension is £104 a week, it makes you laugh that these people can collect three times that and a bit more for turning up, signing in and going to the bar. £1600 a week for getting drunk in bars that we subsidize.

How bloody daft are we?

Well very, if this lacklustre lot are examples of the new recruits:

Robert Edmiston, car salesman who is a hefty Tory donor and whose nomination was turned down previously because of concern about his tax affairs, gets his reward. Edmiston was embroiled in the cash-for-honours scandal and was questioned by the police in July 2006. He secretly lent the Tories £2 million before the 2005 general election, and then converted the loan into a donation contravening the rules. He was involved in collecting money from rich businessmen for onward transmission to the Tories, thus concealing their identities and in funding their hi-tech call centres in Birmingham. He’ll fit in nicely I suspect. But why would the House of Lords need a car salesman? What does he have to offer, except cash?

Michael Bishop another millionaire donor to the Tories is now Lord Bishop (ha ha) and Stan Fink, one of the big City financiers, who has given more than £2 million to the Tories, is also ennobled. Handy having as a donor someone who has bonuses in the 6 figure bracket.

To Mr Miliband’s credit he refused to nominate some Labour donors, who may, I suspect look for somewhere else to put their money in future. Brave man. However another cash for honours suspect Gulam Noon, will be ennobled for Labour.

Before the election Cameron said that he was concerned by the "suspicion" that "money buys honours". Now it’s no longer a suspicion Dave, huh? You know it does.

In a separate story we now hear that MPs' expense receipts will not be published, because it would cost too much money. That’ll be another 650+ people rubbing their hands together with delight, and they try to work out other ways to make money out of us.

When will we get a government that will get to grips with this scandal? I don’t know about you, but I have absolutely zero confidence in any of them.

Full list of the new appointees here.


Pics: (1) Nice understated little room, cheap to upkeep and clean. Not; (2) Lord Fire Raiser of Invergowrie. Since being released from prison appears to have spoken once in the House but collects hundreds of thousands in expenses; (3) Our Dave snapped by someone other than his personal photographer, and look, the wrinkles are back! Now you see why he needs his own man! (4) Lord Car Salesman, he looks like he may well have snake oil too; (5) The Telegraph’s logo for anything to do with expenses. Love the homeless duck!

SPEAKER BERCOW LIVES IN LA LA LAND

John Bercow was supposed to be the reforming Speaker. He was going to sort out parliament, make it accountable to the people (erm, which it was supposed to be all along) and deal with the scandal of expenses.

But he obviously, like so many other people in Westminster, seems to think that what’s good for other people is not necessarily good for him.

It seems that Mr Speaker Bercow has never heard of trains. He has, however, heard of chauffeur driven limos, and uses them to great effect.

Mr Bercow has used cars for 111 journeys, including 21 within the SW1 postcode, where he could have walked.

A trip to Oxford cost us £833 (you can do it for around £10 on the bus), whilst his visit to Canterbury cost £558; Gloucester cost £632 as did a visit to the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff.

Amazingly a journey to South Kensington no more than 3 miles from the Commons, cost £151.

Additionally, as if there were no financial crisis in the country he has spent £15,600 on business class flights for himself, his wife and his staff, employed a spin doctor at £107,000 a year and spent £45,000 on altering and redecorating the Speaker’s House, his grace and favour home in the Palace of Westminster to make it nicer for his children.

Hello Bercow, could you try to live in the same world as the rest of us. You’re an MP for heaven’s sake, not some deity.

You can maintain the dignity of the office perfectly well on the train. It is how YOU BEHAVE that marks your chairmanship of the commons, not how you travel, or the style in which you live.

MR CAMERON TRUSTS THE PUBLIC TO UNDERSTAND...!!!

Nice Mr Cameron has given an interview to the Daily Telegraph pledging that there will be tax cuts for the middle class once the mess is sorted out. And that it will be in this parliament.

So now we know why he is rushing double plus quick, to cut the services that keep low earners and pensioners going. He needs the money for middle class tax cuts.

This is a wide ranging interview in which he takes time out from the serious stuff to tell us that his new daughter sleeps in a cardboard box. Isn’t that sweet...just like tens of thousands of people all over the country...except her cardboard box is inside a posh council house in Downing street, or an even posher one in the country at Chequers, whilst most of the rest of them are under bridges..

He warns the police not to be alarmist over the cuts. He tells them not to suggest that the cuts will mean fewer police on the streets. I expect they are supposed to say. “No bother Dave. We can do exactly the same as before with only 75% of the money....” Having backed the new MPs’ expenses watchdog when he was looking for disgruntled people’s votes, he is now going to reform it because some MPs are a bit upset that the world doesn’t stop and bow to them. Clearly the cuts for normal people don’t apply to MPs.

He says too that Universal benefits could be at risk...so you may have to go beg for your pension, and prove you are a pauper before you can get your winter fuel allowance, despite having paid National INSURANCE all your life. Maybe MPs should be means tested for their expenses in these times when we are all in this together. After all David himself claims for mortgage payments on one of his three houses despite being indecently rich and having a wife who earns in excess of £300,000 a year.

He has backed both William Hague and Andy Coulson, and feels that people have been unfair to them. Poor Mr Coulson is being punished twice he tells us! And presumably we should take Mr Hague at his word and not doubt either his sexuality or his judgment which by most people’s standards is simply abysmal.

He describes how he sees it when this is all over, remembering he has told us services will never return to how they were in the past, but promises middle class tax rebates before the next election.

With Mr Osborne’s spending review just over 3 weeks away, Cameron very generously tells us that he intends to trust the public to accept the truth about spending cuts.

Accept the truth...? From a politician? After what we have had over the last year? You must be having a laugh Mr Cameron.

All I’ll say to you is “Wisteria”.

Pics: Mr Cameron's collection of houses.

AT LEAST SOMETHING IS PROSPERING IN THE UK: THE ARISTOCRACY JUST GROWS AND GROWS AND......

Good Lord... or to be more accurate Lords.

So, we are in the middle of a fearsome tightening of belts. Unemployment is high and growing, staff of every civil service department is to be cut (and whilst that’s not bad thing, we can all expect to be kept waiting longer on the phone while we are told how important our call is) and what is happening in Westminster?

Oh yeah, they are starting their own job creation scheme. They are in fact giving people jobs for life.

The outgoing prime minister is by tradition entitled to ennoble people; to send them to join the aristocracy, wear ermine, call themselves “Lord” (or Baron) something or other, their wives become “Lady” something or other and their children are entitled, for some unknown reason, to the style “The Hon” before their names.

After the fuss about money for peerages Tony Blair forewent his entitlement in that matter, but the worst prime minister in history has decided to make even more of a fool of himself by naming a list of second rate disasters and third rate fools to be appointed to the so called upper house.

Not surprisingly SIR Blair the Labour Plod, sacked quite rightly by Boris Johnson, is to go to the house of doddering old fools, where I dare say, he will be at home. The idiot Dez Browne, the man that was Scottish Secretary at the weekends, he told us, while, during the week, he ran two wars, or rather didn’t run them, failing troops by not fighting for more money for them. The patronizing old fool. John Celtic Reid is also going to the Lords, along with Two Jags, Tudor Beams, Toilet Seat Prescott. The bloody old hypocrite. What kind of Old Labour man wants to be in a house of toffs? Mrs Prescott presumably. John Hutton, another fraud of a man and failure as a War Minister, will be going upstairs to bed too. The full list can be seen here.

http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/latest-news/2010/05/peerages-honours-and-appointments-51162

In total there are to be a further 16 Tories, 9 Liberals, and an amazing 29 Labour peers created, not to mention P C Plod and Ian Paisley, who only became human in the last year or two of his political life, and is closely associated with the odious pair that run Northern Ireland, when not sleeping with their friends’ sons.

So, all in all 56 new troughers! Best buy some new troughs and some more pig swill.

But, there’s more. We are informed that under the new coalition there is to be a balancing of the Upper House, needed because of the enormous number of Labour peers created in the last few years... you know, people like Alan Sugar, who just happened to double his contribution to Labour Party funds that year.... well, well.

And according to the Times, because none of them can be got rid of.... (£300+ a day for life, and no one is messing with THEIR expenses), they will simply have to create even more Liberal and Tory Peers. The Times reckons that will mean a further 77 Tories and 95 Liberals. So another 172 on top of the 56 just appointed, and the current membership, will bring the compliment up to just over 900.

Now that is what I call the right way to show an example to us lesser people. You do with less and we’ll nip off to the House of Lords where you can call us Your Lordship.

Well, when Gorbals Mick went there the place lost its last shred of credibility..... and what else would we do with the money?

What a bloody country.


Pictured: The Lords: Mr Blair who made such a mess of running England's main police force: The last deputy prime minister and chief pie eater, John Prescott.

WHAT ON EARTH GOES THROUGH SOME PEOPLE'S HEADS?

What is it with people who get promoted into “self important” positions and suddenly think that we couldn’t do without them; that they are so special they can’t travel like the rest of us?

We’ve had all the MPs who thought that, in the spirit of the Green Book, it was absolutely necessary for them to have duck houses, manure, hanging baskets, Tudor beams and first class rail travel, etc, etc in older for them to carry out their duties. Then we had aristocrats’ house with its nonsenses.

Now we have this knob Alan Yentob, the BBC Creative Director darling (what on earth is that?), who couldn’t possibly do his job if he didn’t travel business class.

He was defending his claim for a return to New York which cost licence fee payers £3,381.

He pointed out that he had been with the BBC for 40 years and that he was quite a senior figure at the organization. On arriving in New York he gave a talk to an organization (he didn’t say which), then he was filming in the afternoon, then he returned within about 24 hours to London to work straight away.

“Now do you think I should have travelled economy to do that? Because I wouldn’t have been capable of doing the job. I am not quite capable of doing all those things at once.” he said.

What? I know people on a tenth of what you earn who could do that easily.

OK Alan, you poor old thing. Here’s a wee tip, just between you and me. You need to learn to plan your time a little bit more effectively and delegate more.

Why did YOU have to give that talk? Was it an ego thing? Could you have recorded it and sent the video across the internet?

Why were you filming? You are the Creative Director? Why does the Creative Director film? Is that not the job of your vast raft of underlings? If you want to keep your hand in did you need to go all the way to New York? Nothing for the BBC to film in London?

If you HAVE to go to New York, because nothing else will do, arrange for a day off when you come back. You must realize that you are not indispensible. The BBC managed the day you were in New York, it'll manage the next day too. So get over yourself and your big head.

You are so lucky to have a job you clearly like and which pays you £183,000 a year. There are cuts being made all over the country, and bigger ones, between 4 and 8 times the size of the ones promised, just waiting to appear in the next year, if we don’t want to be in the same boat as Greece.

The BBC and your soft feather bed ass are going to have to join the real world. In your case it may be that you have to travel cattle class like the rest of us. Thank your lucky stars. In some people’s cases, it’s the help they need to get out of bed in the morning that is being removed.

Put that in your creative pipe and smoke it, you self important muppet.

Pics: Alan Yentob and Alan Yentob’s living room. Very creative. But when is he going to get that door fitted, the pictures hung and the books put away?

YOU WANT TO LEAVE EARLY SO WE'LL COMPENSATE YOU....EH?

For heaven’s sake.


Why is it that even when we’re in the middle of a recession and everyone is belt tightening, that a man who is at the centre of a controversy about living the life of Reilly on public money, and who has resigned “due to ill heath” (yawn), is getting a big fat pay off of £60,000 in 'an attempt to draw a line under the expenses scandal'.... WHAT?

Ron Culley, who was on an unbelievable £129,000-a-year as head of Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, resigned “on health grounds” in February after being caught in the middle of the fiddle of expenses by directors and executives which included trips to places as far afield as China, India, Italy and the United States.

All that to run the buses in Glasgow!!!

The SPT said then: "We can confirm that our chief executive is seeking early retirement on the basis of failing health and wants to retire to look after his young family." It now says that the payoff respects his employment rights.

The figure includes £30,000 in lieu of notice and £30,000 for early termination of contract. Why? HE SOUGHT IT. HE SHOULD BE COMPENSATING US.

Opposition councillors on the SPT have said that as Culley resigned he should leave with nothing more than his pension. It is reckoned that they will oppose the payment.

Culley quit in February after it was revealed that senior officials managed to claim expense of almost £120,000 in just three years. Culley himself claimed expenses, for meals in some of Scotland’s top restaurants, as well as £1,700 for taxi journeys. (Erm, he was running the busses and trains and he took taxis.... Says all you need to know!)

On one memorable occasion the bold boy flew to New York at a cost of £2,450 and stayed at the Algonquin Hotel for six nights for £1,650 to investigate anti-terrorist measures. As a result of his fact finding trip concrete bollards were put outside some Subway stations. Now if the wee man had just asked me......

The new SPT chairman Jonathan Findlay said: “This proposal, subject to the approval of the personnel committee, will bring this long-running saga to a close. It allows us to move on, to draw a line under the issue and most importantly give staff assurances about their future.” Just what you want to do, I imagine, Jonathan.

We live in a lunatic world. A bloke can fiddle and allow his senior executives to fiddle, to take trips, flying first class to a wide variety of locations staying at top hotels, eating and drinking like Prince Charles, and all to find out what 10 minutes of research on the net would have got him.

When this comes to light (after 3 years...why?), he is asked to explain himself and he takes the tried and tested 'sick' route. He resigns for ill health, and we have to give him half a year’s salary to compensate him!

You really have to ask yourself what would have happened if this had been some shelf filler lad working in Tesco who had been stuffing Mars Bars into his pocket; and got caught; and went off sick out of embarrassment and then resigned to look after his young family.

What would have happened then? Would Tesco have paid him half a year’s salary? Would they Erchie!!!!

Pictures: Culley and (because trains are cool) two Class 334 "Juniper" trains at Gourock. (And no, I'm not a train spotter. All blokes like trains.)

AIRMILES ANDY THINKS HE'S WORTH THE MONEY

Andrew Pierce has written a full length article in the Mail on his interview at Buckingham Palace with his namesake Andrew York.

He was entertained over sandwiches and cake in the prince’s apartments where he says neither of the Equerries was about, so Andrew served the cake himself.... Imagine.....he’s 50 and he served the cake all by himself and that was newsworthy!

Andrew (York, that is) is now the UK Ambassador for Trade and Industry. Of course, without his connections it is doubtful that a man with 20 years military experience and nothing else would have been appointed to such a role, it being more ideally suited to a person with business experience and acumen, but I suppose he has to have something to do. In that role, however, to be fair, he carried out over 600 engagements last year.

Most of the criticism of Andrew is that he prefers to use private planes, funded by us, instead of travelling by rail or train. There are also legitimate concerns about the vast amount of money that his daughters cost the state, without ever giving anything back. Recently it has been highlighted that security for them costs more that £500,000 a year, and that an apartment in St James’s Palace had to be converted, at a cost of £2.5 million for one of them.

[I’m always amused when I hear of this kind of money being spent for renovations. It was the same when the Queen Mother died and Charles got Clarence House. The state paid out £5 million for the palace to be upgraded. This painted a picture of the old QM living in some dreadful slum with damp running down the walls, like some of the pensioners in my town. Not something that I can readily imagine from a woman who insisted on fresh flowers every day in every room of her house, whether she was likely to be in it or not.]

He apparently uses the royal “we” as he describes what he does, travelling across more than 20 countries in the last year, costing the taxpayer over £140,000. But it is the personal use of the Queens helicopter which draws most criticism. He insists on using it for short hops to both official and private engagements at vast cost to the taxpayer. There is also the fact that his royal status giveshim exemption from the reaches of the FOI act for some reason unknown to me, so we don't know how much this all costs.

Yet Andy feels he is good value for money. Now, strange for a Republican blog to say, but in many ways he may be right. Whether Andy knows squat about business or not, he does have huge drawing power. People all over the world are desperate to meet a British royal, and so they turn up and show interest. If this is good for trade, then it’s good for the UK, and possibly even, on very rare occasions, for Scotland. And as the BBC and politicians show, the royals have no particular monopoly on self-important, grubby greed.

However, just as with all these other organisations, it is high time that Andy Airmiles realised that belt tightening is not just for poor people. Someone has to tell him that there are trains and cars and that private planes and helicopters are the province of his mother.... and no one else.

And as for these daughters of his, he must learn to pay for them himself. Even the most ardent royalist must realise that when ill people are being refused Disability Living Allowance and being left to moulder in their houses as cuts are implemented to pay for Labour's recession, £2.5 million to do up what is after all fabulous state housing for one 21 year old girl is just NOT ON. The article is worth a read and to be fair Andrew has some sensible things to say about other people's excesses, particularly what he feels about bankers bonuses beyond the headlines. But he must learn that cuts mean cuts everywhere, and that includes him and his family.

................................................TAXI TO SEOUL PLEASE......

There is no doubt in my mind that the purge on excesses in the House of Commons was desperately required, and this should be followed by a clamp down on the behaviour of members of the Lords, but we should not stop there.

In times of real hardship we have to look at every single thing that we can trim to reduce costs, downsize and save people money they no longer have. Traditionally of course, this has fallen disproportionately on the poor. Libraries, Community Centres, Leisure Centres, Benefits, Pensions... typical examples of cuts that have been made in the past when we have been in a mess.

But, in this new age of Freedom of Information, and an ever more demanding poor, we need to look at how we spend money a little farther up the socio-economic scale.

I was interested in an article on the salaries and expenses of the top people at the BBC. Amazingly, the number of people in the organisation being paid more than £100,000 a year has risen to 400.

I link to an article I read in the Independent, but I’ll just give you a little taste of some of the most ridiculous claims that leapt off the page at me. This is how they spend the £3.6 billion they collect from us in licence fee:

Mark Thompson, Director General, who earns £664,000 a year, has claims ranging from 57p for a parking meter to £5,616 spent through the BBC's central bookings system for a flight to Seoul. You can get return flights to Seoul with Expedia for (at the time of writing) £470. So he wasted over £5,000 of our money because he could. There was no one to say “NOOOOO”;

Jana Bennett, director of BBC Vision, included £38.48 for a "sympathy gift for a key presenter" and £1,254 on six nights at Sunset Boulevard Hotel in Los Angeles. Also she spent £2,392 on taxis through the BBC central bookings service and £106 through expenses. Lunch with a presenter and agent cost £161. It must be bloody hungry work at the BBC, or was that “thirsty” work;

Eric Huggers, director of future media and technology, spent £7,514.80 on a flight to Seoul last year. (He should speak to Mark, his boss, and save us all some money.) He also spent £4,984 on taxis between July and September. There were 13 fares that totalled more than £100 each. The biggest single fare was £627.37. What? Over £600 on a taxi? Was that him coming back from Korea?

These are a few of the joke expenses that you and I are paying for while pensioners, paying the licence fee, shiver and go hungry. Meanwhile the quality of programming goes down and down and down. They say over and over that they need that kind of money and they could go elsewhere in the private sector and get more.

I say that that is complete nonsense. If they could get more elsewhere then that is where they would be. They try to make us think that we are the lucky ones, getting their talent for a mere fraction of what they are worth. Besides, with advertising revenue stretched over more and more channels, and getting thinner due to recessionary cutbacks, ITV and their likes are shedding staff.

But if I’m wrong and they could indeed get more, then what I say is bye bye.... Don’t let the door hit you in the butt.

**********************

PS... What the hell is going on in Seoul that all these inordinately important people need to attend?

MINISTER APPEARS TO SUGGEST THAT WORKING WOMEN MUST HAVE CLEANERS ON EXPENSES

Helen Goodman

Sometimes, when you are reading a newspaper, you rub your eyes and stare at the screen just to make sure that you haven’t misread; you check to make sure it’s not April first, and then you pinch yourself and..... yes... you remember that you’re living in the UK.... that is La La Land.

Today we have the story of poor wee Helen Goodman, a junior minister of sorts at the Dept of Work and Pensions. She has announced to the world that unless women are allowed to claim for cleaners on their expenses they will not be able to come into politics. (Note to jobcentre staff: Don’t try to force unemployed females into vacancies that don’t have a cleaner on expenses.)

Ms Goodman has suggested, according to the Daily Mail, that Kelly’s proposals are sexist because women do most of the cleaning, then she rattles on with a bundle of complaints about how unfair it all is, before she admits that she hasn’t actually read all of the report. How’s that, a minister of the crown mouthing off before she’s read the report?

Goodman, who is married with two children, claims £84 a month for cleaning on top of her £92,000+ salary.

Now maybe I’m a bit dim, but the way I see it, we all have to sort our lives out the way we can best live them. Within a family group we have different chores that we see to, because, no matter how high and mighty we are we still need to eat, sleep, wash, clean up and various other things, on top of doing our job. So, in lots of families where two parents are working, they share the cleaning duties, maybe with the kids or granny or grandad. If someone says that they cannot do their job properly (specially with a £90,000 salary) unless they have a cleaner on expenses, I would think maybe they should think about another career.

I also have to assume that Ms Goodman wouldn't be so selfish as to assume that the perk of cleaner should only apply to female MPs. I'm guessing that what she is suggesting is that all women who work should be able to put a cleaner on their expenses. As a minister at the Dept of Work and pensions, she may want to rethink that policy somewhat, or at lest run it by Yvette.

By the way Ms Goodman is not exactly a stranger to expenses scandal. Although she has only been an MP since 2005 she has managed to rack up a couple of indiscretions so far: renting a holiday cottage at £519 and submitting hotel bills for a period prior to her even being an MP.

Even for a Westminster trougher, that’s pushing the boat out.

THINK BEFORE YOU CLAIM

Subrosa has brought to our attention this morning that Members of the Scottish parliament are to be allowed by the Scottish Parliament's Corporate Body to charge the cost of poppy wreaths to their expenses if they representing Holyrood when laying them.

Technically, of course, you could say that if you are doing a job on behalf of your employer then the materials you need to do the job should be provided by that employer. But, as Subrosa points out the poppy wreaths cost only around £16. There is cheapness, a tawdriness, about the idea of laying a wreath and rushing off to collect expenses for doing it.

Mindful that MSPs’ salaries are in the order of £53,000, a site more than most of the rest of us earn, I think that MSPs should think very carefully about their own fortunate position before they make that claim.

The people we are commemorating with these poppy wreaths gave a very great deal more than £16.

I am happy to add my voice to Subrosa’s appeal for the MSPs to pay for their own wreath or wreaths.