85% OF PEERS ARE AT IT...

The Noble Baron Hanningfield made the claim in defence of his own fiddling in court in England today.

Hanningfield’s excuse for stealing money from the taxpayer was that he thought it was unfair that he did the work of four frontbenchers in the Lords and didn’t get properly recompensed for it. That's the Tories for you!!

Asked about the fact that he had claimed £25,000 for employing someone to whom he paid only £12,500, he said that he could have had £130,000 for staffing expenses had he been in the Commons. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed that was wasn’t in the Commons (all these flunkies bowing and scraping and calling him “my lord” might have been a clue to that), and that if he had a problem with the amount of work that he had to do, he should have gone to his party leader and asked for more resources, instead of just stealing them.

His excuse for charging for hotel rooms for nights when he had been taken home (if I remember rightly, by his chauffeur), he said that 85% of Lords were doing it. But he wouldn’t name them. Well, it wouldn’t do you know, old chap, splitting on a fellow’s co-peers.

The poor old soul said that he had no stocks and shares, no savings and that most of his clothes came from Marks & Spencer. My goodness, a Tory peer dressing out of M&S, tut tut. (Actually M’lord only my best clothes come from M&S. You need a mortgage for them.)

He also, weirdly, produced a biscuit tin full of receipts which he said he had not claimed in a career of more than 40 years.

What kind of weirdo saves all his receipts for 40 years, doesn’t claim any of them and then steals public money and justifies it by saying that he felt he was underpaid.

At 70 the Noble Lord is entitled to his retirement pension, always supposing that he has paid his NI contributions. It’s good enough for millions of other people. Why is it not for him?

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I reckon all the blog readers will be relieved to know that Munguin's Man in America, Danny, based as he is in the state of Missouri, was fortunate enough NOT to be in Joplin when the tornado hit. You can't imagine the relief I felt this morning when I saw his name in my inbox.

MORE LABOUR SLEAZE FROM IRENE ADAMS

Irene Adams, known to oinks like you and me as The Noble Baroness Adams of Craigielea, is the most expensive peer in the House of Lords. She also appears to be amongst the least useful. It was disclosed that she had picked up more than £60,000 a year in allowances since 2006, but spoken in just one debate.

I hope what she had to say was worth it. £200,000+ for one speech is more than Blair gets!!

But it looks like when this one gets her hands on some of our dosh she isn’t about to let it go any time soon. It appears that the good Irene is among 6 former Labour MPs who have yet to repay a total of £50,000 which they owe following the audit of Commons allowances.

The Noble Baroness (pictured above; lovely isn’t she?) complained that the inquiry team would not accept the evidence she had to show that her £4,100 claim was a valid one and vowed to fight the demand intimating that they could take her to court for the money if they wanted.

Not too worried what people think of her then.

Sir Thomas Legg (right), who was responsible for the audit of MPs leaving hundreds of them, including some high profile ones like Liam Fox, owing a staggering total of £1.3 million, ruled that Adams should repay the money. She could provide no evidence for her mortgage payments to support her claims for her second home while she was MP for Paisley North.

Another shameful Scottish Labour MP with her fingers in the till, Irene was at one time the secretary of the MP Allen Adams, whom she married. When he died in 1990 she stood and was elected for the constituency. She paid her daughter and former son-in-law, both Labour councillors, to work in her constituency office. Nice little family business. In fact... The Adams Family business.

When in 2005 her constituency was absorbed into the neighboring one she was bought off with a seat in the House of Lords. An “honour” she has clearly taken advantage of to the full. She continues to live in Paisley, in a luxury flat in a converted mill, charging £11,916 last year to travel between Scotland and Westminster.

The trouble with the corrupt system of handing out honours to people to persuade them to do political favours (in her case to go away) is you are lumbered with them for life...

We have this parasitical woman leaching off us to the tune of £60,000 a year for absolutely no return whatsoever until she dies. If she refuses to pay, I hope that they will take her to court so the world will know what a cheesy little scrounger she is.

Please, when are we going to do something about this House of Horrors? Her £60,000 a year would pay a couple of worthwhile people to do some good somewhere.

WHAT A LOAD OF GARBAGE WE HAVE IN WESTMINSTER

What on earth kind of rubbish have we got as representatives in Westminster?

Firstly we were told in the last parliamentary session that more that 50% of our MPs had been dishonest in their dealings with expenses. That’s more than 50% of our MPs had fiddled their expenses, or stolen from the taxpayer.

And then we had the audacity of the three MPs who considered themselves to be above the law because they were MPs, citing an English Bill of Rights dating from 1689 as their reasoning and, if you please, expecting to be allowed not to stand in the dock, where common criminals stand, as if, for some weird reason they should not be considered either common or criminal.

Fortunately the judge threw it out saying: “I can see no logical, practical or moral justification for a claim for expenses being covered by privilege and I can see no legal justification for it either.” But the point is that the chancing toe rags tried it on at our expense (because they are on legal aid now that they are unemployed).

Additionally, in the last session it seemed that hardly a week went by without one or more of our noble lords being found with their regal snouts in the golden pig swill of the House of Lords Expenses system, and when the law got near to them, an official stamped on legal proceedings saying that it was all perfectly within the rules. So, in the Lords it’s within the rules to cheat on expenses by lying about your accommodation. High time it wasn’t.

Then we had the programme on Channel Four which organised an undercover sting and found host of MPs prepared to sell themselves to the highest bidder, for thousands of pounds for a day’s work, on top of their salary for the days’ work that we were paying them for. (Amazing how people like Pat Hewitt could get two days’ work into one day.)

Now we read that the new office for trying to stop the MPs stealing money all over again was forced to erect a sign at its Commons offices warning MPs: ‘We will not tolerate abuse of staff.’

Apparently MPs are furious at the way they have been treated. Paul Farrelly, Labour, sent a complaint to Nigel Gooding, the man in charge of the IPSA, saying the new system was "prehistoric, amateurish, self-defeating and bureaucracy gone mad".

He wrote: "I have been asked for a copy of my passport or birth certificate to prove my date of birth. Why that is necessary, I do not know. More importantly, as I have used my overdraft limit, my mortgage payment will bounce, causing me embarrassment and further charges. You could easily have saved us all this aggravation."

Awww wee shame. Try buying road tax, signing on, getting a national health dentist. That’s aggravation.

It’s the kind of thing the rest of us have lived with for years, and it’s the kind of thing that you people brought upon yourselves when you stole all our money. Tough! Now you know how it feels, and you had no idea before. You get zero sympathy from me.

In the meantime Mr Gooding has announced his resignation from the post, for what he calls " for the sake of my health and sanity”, so abusive have MPs become, when they discovered the expenses office was actually going to do its job this time and the gravy train was in the sidings.

What a third rate lot they are.

BENEFIT CHEATS..... WATCH YOUR BACKS....THE DWP IS OUT TO GET YOU (WELL OBVIOUSLY NOT ALL OF YOU)

Why is it that when they put up this kind of poster the photograph is always of a working class person in a working class area of a town?

You see what I mean... I mean, does this fellow here look like he could have a job that paid £64,766 a year... nope, I tell a lie, £64,766 +1.5% ?

Nope. He looks like he's on the dole.

....Well, yes it does, you see. And despite what the pictures say, it shouldn't matter much if you are just plain old Joe in a t-shirt or.... if you do earn £65,000 whatever a year and have a generous expense account....

Yes... this one is a bit different, isn't it? And that's because no one in the Department of Work and Pensions came up with this one. On no Sir. They are far too busy chasing the poor who are fiddling to stay alive, to bother with the likes of this fellow here.

But isn't he every bit as culpable?

DISASTROUS YEAR FOR THE COMMONS, ACCORDING TO BERCOW

In an interview with the BBC’s Radio 4 flagship news programme, "Today", Speaker Bercow admitted that it had been a disastrous year for the reputations of politicians. Using words like cataclysmic to describe the situation, he said that he wanted to see reforms that would put MPs above reproach. He indicated that he didn’t see the situation as irreversible, but said that without any “payback” there would be no “comeback”.

I agree with him. It has been a terrible year for the reputations of our politicians and BOTH houses of parliament. They have made themselves the laughing stock of the world, and to some extent dragged us down with them.

The system has had to take a lot of the blame and in all fairness so it should. Who among us is capable of total self regulation? They should never have been left to decide their own terms and conditions. It was also irresponsible to refuse proper salary increases to MPs in order to appear “prudent” but to turn a blind eye to the use of “allowances” to top up salaries.

Drastic changes to the way that the Commons and the Lords are run are required. Allowances and expenses need to be brought into the 21st century and MPs and Peers must be treated like other government employees. That is, after all, what they are. We need to remember that, but above all, THEY need to remember it.

Many of them are fond of telling us how hard they work, for very little money and that is why they took the expenses system which they set up and they policed, to the limit, and then some more. Those that think that they could get more money in the City or the Law Courts or private industry, and care more about the money than the job, should resign immediately and make way for people who wish to serve.

The incoming government should promise to continue the work of modernising the Lords into a 21st century senate, without all the titles and flimflammery. It’s maybe pretty but it serves no purpose and it’s expensive and classist.

MPs’ and Senators’ salaries should reflect their job descriptions, and their expenses should reflect the fact that they may require temporary accommodation in the English capital, but should also be mindful that they are public servants of a hard up little country. They need to remember that they work for us. They are not our rulers. They do not require to travel First Class, to live in large prestigious London apartments, or to furnish these places from John Lewis, at prices 3 or 4 or 10 times the cost that the average person would pay.

All over the country, what they like to call “ordinary” people are losing their jobs, taking reductions in salary or hours, working extra for nothing. MPs and Peers, many of whom are held in contempt by us “ordinary” people, must be seen to do the same sort of thing. They should do so with humility. They’ve had it good for a long time, now when they are asked for pay back they should show some dignity.

WELL, WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT: A NOBLE LORD APPEARS TO HAVE MISLED THE HOUSE AS TO HIS ADDRESS

Goodness, doesn’t time fly when the blogosphere is falling down around you. It hardly seems seven days since we outed another little piggy peer with his snout deep in the trough that we have to keep refilling from our taxes.

This week I’d like to present to you His Nobleness, The Baron Taylor of Warwick, who has been caught using someone else’s home address to claim thousands of pounds in expenses. The Noble Lord told the House of Lords that his main home was a terraced house in Oxford in which he did not actually live (well, he didn’t tell them that bit, obviously). He also neglected to tell them that he didn’t own it either.

Worse still, he never bothered to mention his “arrangement” to the person who actually owns the house. Right, I know it’s complicated but I’ll try to explain. Watch out for the tricky bit... there’s a Mr Taylor and a Lord Taylor; they are not one and the same:

The house belongs to a certain Tristram Wyatt who is an academic at the university. Mr Wyatt’s companion, Mr Robert Taylor, is the step-nephew of the Noble Lord. Mr Taylor has said that Lord Taylor does not live there and has never lived there. Mr Wyatt was not aware that his address was being used. The neighbours have confirmed that the only people who live there are Mr Wyatt and Mr Taylor.

Lord Taylor, on the other hand, lives in Ealing with his family. However, but telling the House of Lords that his main residence was outside of the capital he has been able to claim expenses to the tune of £70,000, between 2001 and 2007. Expenses to which, needless to say, he was not entitled.

When confronted with this earlier in the year Lord Taylor said that he lived with his mother in the Midlands (of England). His Lordship seemingly has a short memory, for his mother died in 2001. Presumably he knew about this, but it slipped his mind.

Sometimes you wonder at the arrogance of these people. First the man uses his dead mother’s address and then his step-nephew’s address, and it never occurs to him that he will be caught. The worst of it is that Lord Taylor is a barrister (not just noble, but learned as well). In short, you'd think he'd know better

One a week... sometimes more, and yet, I heard someone on the radio this morning telling us that there were just a few bad apples in the barrel.

I wonder when it will occur to them that it might be an idea to drop all this nonsense about Rt Hon and Noble when they address each other. They are not honourable, they are dishonourable; they are not noble, they are ignoble. In turns we laugh at them or are spitting mad at them. They have disgraced our parliament. They are making us a laughing stock.

I do not wish to defame Baron Taylor, but from the evidence presented in The Times, it does seem that the man is both a liar and a thief. Why he is not locked up?

ANOTHER WEEK-END, ANOTHER LORD, ANOTHER SCANDAL

Details of Brooke's claims, and his two houses

I suppose it must be handy after a hard day at the Lords to only have to travel three miles to your townhouse in London, one which you have owned for 23 years and where you are on the electoral list.

So it came as a bit of a surprise to me... well, only a very little bit of a surprise, I admit... to discover that the Noble Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, actually doesn’t count his London home as his first residence. Nope, amazingly His Lordship instead regards his first home as being in Brighton. This is even more astounding when you consider that his wife works as a community director of Battersea nursery school and that he has his company directorships listed from his Battersea address. Why, I kept on asking myself, did he then tell the House of Lords' expenses department that his main home was on the south coast of England? Then it came to me in a flash.

£140,000. That’s it. For that is what he has charged us for him to stay overnight in his own home all these years. It’s just as well we have a broad back, isn’t it? Just as well that, as a country, we have money to burn. Just as well we’re not trying to cut back on anything like benefits, pensions and Territorial Army, isn’t it? Just as well we're not looking at big redundancies in the Civil Service so that we can save money.

His Lordship says that he has done nothing wrong, don't they always? He is entitled to claim these expenses. He says that he lives in Brighton for seven months of the year and as such is allowed to claim his overnight allowances when he has to be in London. But my point is that he has had his London home for more than 20 years. The allowance is for peers to claim hotel expenses when they are overnighting in London due to Lord’s business. It was never designed so that people could charge the taxpayer for staying overnight in their own home.

The noble Baron was in the news earlier this year when it came to light that he had failed to declare £36,000 a year earnings from management consultancy with a company when dealing in the House with matters concerning their clients’ interests. He resigned from the consultancy in the aftermath of these revelations.

For some all this might be acceptable behaviour, but for a man who has spent his life as a trade unionist and a keen advocate of financial moderation, it really shows a moral compass stuck at self interest.

Shame on you, your Lordship.

PROSECUTIONS ON THE CARDS? OR WILL PIGS FLY!

At last! It seems that the police have decided to pass their files on 3 noble Lords and 3 honourable members to the Crown Prosecution Service, the English equivalent of the Procurator Fiscal. It is expected that a decision on whether to prosecute or not will be made by England’s top prosecutor, Keir Starmer in January, well in advance of the General Election.

The three peers are: Lord Clark of Hampstead, a former Labour Party chairman, who apparently has admitted a “terrible mistake” by claiming overnight expenses when he was in fact going home, or staying with friends (How can you make a mistake over that; didn’t he know where he was staying?); Lady Uddin, who lived in London but claimed that her main home was an unfurnished flat in Maidstone, thus netting over £100,000; and Lord Hanningfield, who also managed to claim £100,000 for overnight stays, when in fact he went home to Essex in a chauffeur driven car provided by the taxpayer, in his role as chairman of Essex County Council. How confused must he have been after a hard day’s work in the bar, sorry, I mean the Lords?

The honourable members are: Elliot Morley, who claimed for a mortgage he didn’t have; David Chaytor, who did the same; and our own Jim Devine, of dubious shelves and even more dubious rewiring fame.

Police appear to have ruled out taking any action over flipping of houses, or avoidance of Capital Gains Tax, which seems incredibly generous of them, given that millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money was lost. It seems, however, that the Inland Revenue is looking into 27 (only 27?) claims for items not considered to be vital in the carrying out of parliamentary duties, with a view to charging 40% tax on their value. One can only imagine that this must include the duck house and the moat cleaning, not to mention the bath plug. I’m sure small businessmen will be delighted at this new, much more generous regime over small matters of tax irregularities.

It is good to hear that some investigations are being carried out, but bad to hear that there are so few. It was also disappointing to hear that no legislation would be introduced to deal with MPs’ expenses in the parliamentary year to come. I would have thought that, given the shortness of legislative time, the importance to the reputation, both here and abroad, of the so-called mother of parliaments, and the public’s obvious fury, Brown might have thought it prudent to include this in yesterday’s speech. New MPs in a new parliament in June of 2010 must start with a clean slate and a new system that we can have some faith in. What do you think are the chances of that?

Update: According to the BBC's World at One, Christopher Kelly has put pressure on the Prime Minister to ensure that legislation is introduced to enact the recommendations in his report. In one of their swiftest U-turns yet, Downing Street seems to have agreed that this may well be done. I wonder!