PAY UP TO PLAY THE GAME

You may remember that a lad was walking home from his girlfriend's house on one hot night of the London riots in August. He was thirsty and helped himself to two bottles of water from a shop that had been looted and was sitting open. Total value of his theft, around £2.80. He was sent to prison for 6 months. 


With the agreement of the government courts were encouraged to hand down severe sentences to anyone who had been even remotely involved. For example, two lads who posted invitations to the riots on the Facebook pages were sentenced to 4 years in prison.


When cases went to the English Appeal Court they were upheld.


Baron Haddingfield, a man in a position where no one would question his integrity because of his station, a man who was bowed and scraped to, who was entitled to a chauffeur driven car, and who was called a Noble Lord, in fact a man people might have been expected to look up to stole, not 2 bottles of water worth £2.80, but £28,000. He was sentenced to 9 months imprisonment but actually only served 9 weeks because he was feeling poorly.


Baroness Uddin stole £125,000 from us by pretending that she lived at the seaside and was obliged to purchase another house in London because she had to attend the House of Lords. In fact she had had the house in London for many years. Her kids had been brought up there. The seaside flat was unfurnished and she never went there. It was all a great big scam to make her some money. And she went further. She would walk into the Lords, sign in, and walk out another door, spending less than 5 minutes in the building. For that she claimed her daily allowance of £300. 


She hasn't been sent to prison at all, although the police are said to be looking into her case a couple of years on.


But now the House of Lords has decided to punish them and all their grubby little mates most severely. Yes, draconian measures are to be taken.


From now on they won't be allowed to return to the House of Privilege until the money has been repaid, or until the next UK General Election, whichever comes first. They will, of course retain their titles and styles.


Nooooooooooo, I hear you cry in unison, at the severity of the punishment. Take it to the European Court of Lordly Rights.

The Lords' authorities have decided against trying to pursue noble members through the courts as they think that judges would not be prepared to hear cases involving the rights of the house.


Dear dear, and I thought London had police! Where's Cressida Dick when you erm need her?

DPP blames Lords for derailing Uddin prosecution

I blogged on this story earlier in the day, but there are fact that have since emerged and I feel that we actually have something quite serious going on here... so I hope you’ll excuse a second story on the same subject.

When the three MPs in the dock requested that they should not in fact stand in the actual dock like common criminals but sit on the body of the court like they were spectators, and then proceeded to put forward a defence that they did not recognise the jurisdiction of an English court over them but, because they were politicians they should be judged by THEIR peers, not by OUR peers like us ordinary people are, there was an element of the surreal about it.

There they were, three fat cat MPs who had been on the fiddle because they thought no one would ever find out, had been brought to book, just as if they were common criminals. But they were going to try one last gasp attempt to get off with it; one last throw of the dice and use of the “get out of jail because you’re an MP” card that is the Westminster Monopoly set.

So we all had a little laugh at the pathetic low life and watched as the first part of their plan fell apart. “Can we sit in the posh seats?” they asked, expecting, no doubt that the judge would say "Yes Sirs". But he didn’t.... and so we thought: Nice one. Hopefully the rest of it will fall apart too. The use of some ancient Bill of Rights is a bit of a laugh after all....they can't be serious......can they?

Until just a few moments later, the announcement came that the estimable Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions in England, had had to drop the case against Uddin of the other place, because of a ruling by some official of that House that its members could call their first home a place that they only visited once a month. Possibly only for a few minutes. It certainly must be so, because it would be cold comfort farm if we visited Mrs Uddin’s first home for any amount of time... given that there is more or less no furniture. Paul, that well known Labour donor who has also been let off fraud charges, might have difficulty visiting his first home as he’s never actually been there. He owns it, but it’s a staff flat in one of his hotels currently occupied by one of his staff.

Clearly the joke that had been the MPs trying to put themselves above the law has become reality with the people of the upper chamber. It has put Keir Starmer in a position where he cannot prosecute people who are quite clearly guilty of an offence. Uddin will be disciplined by the House of Lords whose maximum penalty is to ask her not to attend the House for 6 months!!!

In short, a ruling by an unelected official in the House of Lords has put the members of that House above the law that the rest of us live by. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands, indeed millions of our pounds have been taken under false pretences by this unelected and largely useless body of fat cats and we can't do diddly about it.

Are we just going to sit here and take this?

....................................

Pictured: Baroness (like she deserves that title) Udders, who is apparently relieved... you bet you she's relieved. Aren't you just sweetie? She's got away with £100,000 of our dosh, just like her mate ex-Home Secretary Smith, the dodgy lodger.

WHEN ARE WE GOING TO REFORM THIS PLACE?

How embarrassing for Gordon Brown and David Cameron. Three Labour MPs and a Conservative lord yesterday pled not guilty to fraud, and insisted that English Courts should not try them as they were parliamentarians.

Morley, Chaytor, Devine and Hanningfield said the charges against them should be heard by parliamentary authorities (which, as we all know, let MPs off with most stuff, and Lords off with everything).

They insisted that they were protected from criminal prosecution by parliamentary privilege citing the English Bill of Rights of 1689.

The MPs asked to be spared the humiliation of being forced to stand in the dock of the court like the rest of the criminal fraternity because they were something special. Much to his credit the magistrate denied the request.

The barrister for the MPs trotted out some nonsense about his clients of course not feeling that they were above the law, insisting that parliamentary privilege is a part of the law and had been since 1689. He did not think that his clients should not stand trial, but (and I admit, I paraphrase) not in the kind of court that was suitable for ordinary people.

Hanningfield, in a separate case, pled not guilty to charges relating to his allowance claims. His barrister said he would also challenge the jurisdiction of the court. He too apparently feels that what is right for ordinary people wouldn’t suit him too terribly well.

Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, had the men charged with false accounting. When they indicated that ordinary people’s courts did not have the right to try the likes of them Mr Starmer replied that prosecutors had decided that the matter should be tested in court.

Interestingly when Princess Anne was charged in court (albeit with far less serious charges) no similar claim for superiority was made.

The charges, according to The Times, are as follows:

Morley, MP for Scunthorpe, faces three charges alleging that he claimed £30,428 more than he was entitled to in second home expenses between 2004 and 2007.

Chaytor, MP for Bury North, also faces three charges. He is accused of fraudulently claiming £18,425 in second home allowances and of using a false invoice to claim £1,950 in IT services.

Devine, MP for Livingston, faces two charges alleging that he claimed £3,240 for cleaning services and £5,505 for stationery using false invoices in 2008 and 2009.

Hanningfield faces six charges of false accounting, relating to 13 claims of between £154.50 and £174 for overnight allowances between 2006 and 2009.

In a separate case it was announced today that Uddin had got away with what had been alleged as fruadulent claims for housing allowances. In what some will see as a complete travesty of justice the case against Mrs Uddin was thrown out because of a recent ruling by the Lords authorities which decided that peers could nominate a property as their "main" home even if they only "visit" it once a month.

Given the generosity of overnight expenses this has cleared as legal the practice of nominating a main home out of London, as long as a visit for a few minutes can be arranged once a month. Nice little earner.

No wonder these people want to be tried by parliament. We’d probably end up paying them compensation and they would all be made Privy Councilors and be given knighthoods and a slap up dinner at Buckingham Palace.

WHEN ARE WE GOING TO REFORM THIS PLACE?


Picture, from The Times, shows Elliot Morley (second left), David Chaytor (second right) and Jim Devine (right) arriving at court with their lawyers.

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