MPs GETTING ABOVE THEMSELVES AGAIN WITH FIRST CLASS TRAVEL

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I understood that, following the scandal of MPs thieving from the public by putting virtually their entire expenditure on expenses, various things were to change.


One of these was that they were supposed to travel cattle class like the rest of us on what passes in the UK for a train network, instead of luxuriating in first class at the most expensive fares in the world.


Well, that is what was agreed, but of course, in practice (if you believe the Daily Mail) the thieving tossers have been on the fiddle again.


According to figures released by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), MPs claimed for a total of 1334 first class train journeys at a cost of £136,800 in June and July 2011. This is a staggering increase of 155% over the same period in 2010.


It seems that as the memory of the expenses scandal uncovered by the Daily Telegraph recedes from memory, these self important public servants are back to enjoying the comforts that most of the rest of us are denied.


But it doesn't stop at first class rail travel. Oh no. While the public squeeze in to third class seats in aircraft, our representatives in parliament have been winging it hither and thither in business class. 115 flights were made in June and July last year, at a cost of £35,722 (including one to Athens costing £844.20!!!


Upper class air and train fares, say the Mail, are on target to reach £1 million this year.

They are supposed to go second class, or tourist class, like the people they have the great honour to represent, and of whom they are employees!


They were also supposed to take buses instead of taxis, except in exceptional circumstances. Of course, you'll have guessed that these exceptional circumstances have occurred more and more often. Indeed in June and July last year, they doubled from the previous year, to over £13,000 worth.


Message to MPs. Don't push us too far. We're getting poorer and poorer; you're taking more and more...and we're getting angrier and angrier.

DID YOU KNOW YOU PAID FOR HIM TO GO TO THE WORLD CUP FINAL?

We have been told to expect a 25% reduction on all public services, excluding health care. The UK government has dictated that for England, and as a consequential, we will get 25% less money to run what we are allowed to be responsible for.

According to an article in yesterday’s Independent, that reduction will only skim the top off the massive £4,000,000,000,000 debt that has been racked up, not only by New Labour, but by a series of unaffordable decisions made over the years since the Second World War, including public sector pensions, nuclear power stations, PFI, and allowing banks to gamble with ordinary people's savings, so that they have to be rescued by the taxpayer, despite taxpayer being as broke as a completely broken thing.

In the midst of this catalogue of miserly stands the BBC, clearly blissful unaware that anything untoward is happening despite its supposedly being the best news broadcaster in the world. Oh yes, poor thing, it has to publish its top people’s expenses, but that doesn’t seem to have bothered it one tiny little bit. According to the latest figures, various BBC executives are keeping small taxi companies in a champagne and truffles lifestyle, because they’re clearly far too important to take the metro or the bus like ordinary little people.

BBC deputy director general Mark Byford spent almost £5,000 flying to South Africa for a World Cup Final visit at the weekend. He used the visit to hold meetings with bodies such as Fifa, which invited him, as well as visiting news bureaux in the region, the BBC said. Well now, there’s a surprise. He went all the way to South Africa at our expense, the very weekend that the final of the world Cup was due to take place. Coincidence probably.

What irritates me is that this bloke couldn’t fit his lardy arse into a normal seat in Tourist class, nor even a roomier seat in Business.... oh no, the big cheese had to take himself, at our expense mind you, First bloody Class, and be treated like a movie star. Furthermore while he was there he was obliged to take another First Class return flight to Kenya, again at our expense. Not sure why.. but Kenya is very nice.

The BBC's chief operating officer Caroline Thomson claimed £3,389.69 on taxis during a three-month period for the first quarter of this year. BBC controller of vision Jana Bennett claimed £2,736.02 on taxis during the claim period. And the BBC's director of future media and technology Erik Huggers made taxi claims for £2,940.98.

Where did they go? The moon?

OK, so it’s time the BBC got a drift of how things are in this sadly mismanaged country. They might try listening to their own news programmes occasionally for example (although, of course, they will only find out what is happening in the south east of England if they do.

I await the announcement that as of today the licence fee (or poll tax) of £145.50 will be reduced by £36.38, or 25%, and that the likes of Byford and that self important idiot Yentob and all the many and various other highly paid, brilliantly pensioned and ridiculously titled executives move their privileged backsides into the world. You know, the one that is round ....

NICHOLAS WINTERTON: THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

SOMETIMES YOU just have to feel sorry for David Cameron. There he is, poor man, trying to persuade the country that Tories have changed. They are no longer the callous, uncaring, devil take the hindmost party of the Thatcher years, nor are they, despite the high marginal propensity of the shadow cabinet members to have Eton and Oxford somewhere on their CV, the class ridden, snobby, superior party of times even further behind us.

No, Dave’s modern Tories (he’d call them New Conservatives if only someone else hadn’t thought of that) are cutting edge, 21st century, open-minded Co-op loving and inclusive. And then out of the woodwork, and just when you thought his likes had disappeared forever, comes dear old Nicholas Burbling Moron Winterton.

The Wintertons, for there are two of them, have a proud history of being “difficult” from a PR point of view. Nicholas is a hard right winger, pro fox hunting, gay hating, pound loving, Europe hating, and capital punishment loving who came in for criticism recently when he slapped a Labour MP on her bottom. His wife is a nasty old racist, sacked from her shadow position in 2002 for telling an unsavoury joke about throwing Pakistanis from a train, she had the Conservative Whip removed in 2004 for telling making fun of the deaths of 23 Chinese cockle pickers. She said recently that she was glad that Britain was still a white and Christian country. I trust that she didn’t include herself in that category, although she is probably white.

The two of them together perpetrated a particularly devious, underhand fiddle on housing allowances, whereby they put the flat, bought on expenses, into a Trust for their children, and then charged us rent to live in it whilst extracting from us £800 in overpaid Council Tax.

Mr Cameron called them “indefensible”. How going to Eton gives one a gift for understatement!

Dave must have been relieved, then, when they announced that they were to stand down at the election. Under the new arrangements there will be, at least for a while, not much to fiddle. I don’t know if these two facts are in any way connected.

But it seems that Nicholas has decided to embarrass the Tories one more time before he heads off to wherever boring old snobs go in retirement. He announced that it is wrong that MPs will no longer be able to claim for First Class travel.

He said "That puts us below councillors and officers of local government. They all travel first class. Majors in the army travel first class. So we are supposed to stand when there are no seats ... I'm sorry, it infuriates me."

Awwwwwwwwwwww. Poor wee thing.

Incredibly he went on to complain that standard-class passengers were a totally different type of people, who looked over one’s shoulder and made a noise and had children..... ARGH!

You can hear an interview he did with Radio 5 Live, here. It really is worth a listen if you like a good laugh.

If ever there is a way for the Tories to lose the next election then Winterton is it. Were I the chairman of the Labour Party I’d be asking him and Mrs Winterton if they wanted to do a few wee interviews.

I think it’s only fair to point out that a Conservative spokesman suggested that Winterton was “out of touch”. Out of touch? Off the planet more like.

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