RANDOM THOUGHTS

I see the Botox has worn off, and then some!

I was thinking today that the British doctor who was killed, or died, in Syria, was an example of just how the "clout" that BT likes to brag we have everywhere, gets things done.

His brother explained that he had been in touch with the FCO to try to get them to do something. Other European countries had moved quickly to secure the safety of their nationals. Germany in particular had done this very effectively. Britain seemed strangely powerless by contrast.

Some idiot junior minister or bag carrier from the FCO was trotted out to say that they had asked for consular access, but nothing had been forthcoming, but it was a scandal that the man had been murdered by the Syrians.

That clout we have in the world truly is frighteningly powerful... Our enemies fear us and our friends admire us... Hmmm yeah.

Sounds much more like one word from London and wee Willie, and ...erm.... sod all happens…

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You hardly need to think about it.
For heaven's sake who would trust this man with the tea fund?

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Margaret Thatcher dies - Cameron says she was his favourite all time leader.

Nelson Mandela dies - Cameron says he was his favourite all time hero.

Peter O'Toole dies - Cameron says he was in his favourite all time film.

Ronnie Biggs dies - Still Waiting to hear if he was his favourite all time criminal.

Silly really, he has many many close friends who are on trial at this very moment. Surely one of these must be his favourite...Lynton, Andy, Rebekah, Charlie....?

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Ye gads! That's not the SPIV Cameron approaching one, is it?
Quick Camilla, pretend one is one...

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It was interesting to see that Danny Alexander has found a black hole in his head.

Well, to be honest, he didn't find anything, as locating his arse with two hands would be a real break though as far as he is concerned.

However, his poor staff at the treasury have apparently found a black hole of billions in John Swinney's  costings for an independent Scotland. Leaving aside the fact that the white paper was informed by some seriously clever economists and academics (not likely to be found at the treasury), one question popped immediately to my mind.

Would this, I wondered, be the same treasury that oversaw the complete collapse of the economy only a few years ago not having foreseen it one tiny little bit, and the treasury which has since consistently failed to forecast one single thing right, except maybe what time the tea lady would bring round morning coffee, or what their bonuses would be? Yes it could. So...maybe just a tad dubious then? Or maybe even a load of horse manure?

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Oi! Where are you off to Baldy? What you going to do about all these
 poor people your half arsed schemes are killing every week?

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At the risk of becoming boring on the subject, the seemingly serial thief, His Noble Beardyness Lord Hanningfield, bless him, has been on the fiddle again, nipping in to the House of the Walking Dead, signing in the book, taking a quick subsidied snifter and sodding off again £300 richer. 

Quite clearly the greedy old Tory doesn't learn a lesson very quickly. He was sent down for 9 months for being a thief less than 2 years ago, but, as is the wont of these people, he pulled a nervous breakdown out of the hat and hey presto... was out of stir within 9 days.

Possibly the fact that prison warders didn't greet him with a respectful "good morning my lord", and bow as he passed in the corridor, was too much for his aristocratic sensibilities and brought about his complete collapse.  

Once out of stir he was able to get himself back together with a good bit of expense fiddling... After all, if you only get 9 days, it's probably worth the risk. He says he paid back all that he stole, so obviously the man has to start getting it back. 

£300 a day x 5 over say 35 weeks of the year when the lazy old buggers aren't on holiday = £52,500 tax free, plus cheap booze and grub and a pile of free toadying servants... Nice one your old faker.

Talking of old fakers, I wonder how Margaret Moran's nervous breakdown is going now that she got off with stealing all that money. Back to being a plump middle aged dolly?

Here are some pictures to remind us of the unlovely old fraud Mags...

Before, at the time of, and just after the trial, which she was excused as she was deemed unable to plead because of severe depression:

Before the trial (left) looking like an overweight 50 year old with a strange orange flower growing out of her head; at the time of the trial having aged by 30 years, now looking like a podgy old bat. And below, the week after the trial that she dodged, looking remarkably better and not a day over 60 (although still a bit on the plump side).
This old witch, who stole £53,000 of taxpayers' money, could give master classes on how to avoid justice.

Leaving the pub and out for a walk with the dog only days
after being diagnosed as too ill to stand trial.
Depression is a terrible thing.

THE TWO FACES OF MARGARET MORAN

Congratulations to Mrs Moran. 

She's been found guilty of stealing £53,000 from us, but bless her, she's too sick to be able to appear in court, and so she's not to be punished, at least for now and possibly not ever. 

I make no comment about her mental state: she's always appeared to me to be slightly unhinged, but I'd like to point out that the last time she was so ill, so depressed, so unable to get off her backside and do her job as an MP (despite still being paid for it), she managed to  turn up, dressed to the nines, and brimming with confidence, to apply for a lobbying job...(or so she though, because it was actually a sting by "Despatches", and she made a fool of herself, yet again in front of the British public).


Why is it that some criminals can plead that they are depressed simply because they have been caught, and that is enough to have them excused from trial, and yet no matter how depressed others are it's down to the Sheriff court and off to the pokey with them? 

It's amazing what scraping the make up off, letting you hair go grey and putting on a shabby old coat and hat can do to add 40 years to your age and make you look like you've given up.

     

Edit: Just for Niko:

WHITHER MAGGIE THE MORON? I PROMISE I WON'T DO ANOTHER POST ON HER FOR...AGES!

I know; I'm sorry. Brownlie will say I'm obsessed with the woman.

And in a way he's right. I just can't get over the belligerent way she behaved on the day she was accused of improper behaviour by the Daily Telegraph.

I imagine that most of her recent weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth is for the cameras, and the judge. She must hope she gets one like Lord Hanningfield from Essex, who will say that the poor soul is in terrible health; that this has broken her, and that the ignominy alone is punishment enough for the (allegedly)thieving (not allegedly) bitch .

I doubt it's going to work though. He was a Tory and likely had connections. She's Labour, common and stupid and any connections she may have had when she had money will have melted like 'sna' affn a dyke'. She's on her own now.

However, I thought you'd like to look at a before and after picture of her. It seems that the young looking fashion conscious (if you can call orange flowers growing out of your head fashionable) Margaret Moran has not, without the aid of all the money she (allegedly) used to steal from us whilst not doing her job as MP for Luton South, been able to continue to purchase make up and hair die.

She must have had to sell the lovely orange hat and resorted to something a little cheaper and more functional.

For this (right and below) was the sorry assed figure that appeared in court to answer charges of stealing some £80,000 of expenses.

This sum included £22,500 for a home in Southampton, hundreds of miles from her constituency or London, and apparently owned by someone who has variously been described as a friend, a boyfriend and her husband. She also had boiler repairs and work on her conservatory worth £14,000+ done. Of course this kind of thing was absolutely vital to her doing her job as an MP.

Only thing was she seemed to have rather a slipshod attitude to that side of things. Perhaps her expenses form filling took too much of her time, or maybe it was just disinterest, but she didn't appear much in Luton South, even when her office had set up meetings for her.

I hope they find her guilty and send her to Wormwood Scrubs for 40 years.

|But like most of my wishes, it's not gonna happen. She is likely to get a short sentence of under a year's duration, and she will, if she is like the rest of the lying cheating scum MPs and Peers, only serve a quarter of it.

I'll be interested to see if Ken Clarke's feral underclass serve as little of THEIR sentences.

What's the betting?

Answers, as usual, on a postcard.

Pics: Before (top left) a middle aged woman of not bad looks, and now, a haggard old crone. Let this be a warning to potential criminals out there. This is (allegedly) the wages of sin.

I WONDER IF THEY ALLOW HATS LIKE THIS IN WORMWOOD SCRUBS

At long last the awful Margaret Moran woman has been charged, and it was worth waiting for... 15 counts of false accounting and 6 of fraud.

How well I remember the morning, two years ago, when she was asked about the matter in a tv studio and denied it strenuously and furiously. This great podgy ball of indignation was, she said, going to sue the Daily Telegraph for defamation.

Aye, well that died a death pretty sharpish, didn’t it?

Instead she went on the sick (on full pay) just like so many of her colleagues, and kept a low profile, presumably hoping it would all blow over. But it didn’t. Bummer eh, Mags?

She improved and furnished (it is alleged) her main home, under a scheme designed to maintain a second home. She managed to claim for homes in London, Luton and Southampton (100 miles away from her constituency, and which turned out to be a man friend’s house). Additionally she passed false invoices on 7 occasions, allegedly, of course . Greedy cow (equally allegedly).

She is a bit of card though, is our Moran. She owns a home in Spain, and on one occasion, when she felt that her privacy was being violated, she put up a “No Trespassers” kind of notice, based on English law (which, horror of horrors, does not apply in Spain) typed, if you please, on House of Commons headed paper... presumably to give it some gravitas!

The only thing gravitas about her from what I can see, is her ample chest, and we all know what gravity does to that!

While she was away from work, on the sick, neglecting her constituents even more so than normal, she was caught bonny by a “Despatches” investigation. They set up a scam in which they had someone pose as an agent for a PR company looking for influential people who might like to lobby for them... and they caught out a good few grasping greedy troughers, who seemed to feel that they were worth around £4,000 a day, including one who, he confided, had been tipped the wink that he would go to the Lords, and that would be most useful to them. Erm...wooops.

Moran (remember she was on the sick, being paid from state funds), was ready to start as soon as the election was over, she told them, and offered access to all her girly mates in parliament including Harriet Harman.

I wish they had shown their stupid faces when they found out what asses they had made of themselves.

Anyway, I expect that the upside of prison life will be that the ample Ms Moran, like the Devine Jim, will come out a bit trimmer. Maybe her orange hat won’t look so hilariously stupid then.

Post Script: I see a young lad of previous good behaviour, in fact a hopeful for the Olympics, has been jailed for 8 months for stealing a pocket full of cigarettes. I wonder how long she'll get for all this defrauding and lying! What's the betting it ends up less?

AT LEAST THE LORDS CAN'T STEAL REDUNDANCY MONEY FROM US: THEY'VE GOT THE JOB FOR LIFE!

It’s taken nearly a year for the authorities to accede to the Freedom of Information request, but finally we have the figures to show that every single MP chose to accept their Golden Goodbyes, worth up to £65,000. Even those who had been guilty of theft took the money and ran.

Even the chiselling little bitch like Moran, who you will remember stole tens of thousands of pounds from us getting her boyfriend’s house (not anywhere near either London, or her constituency), done up, got half of what she would otherwise have been due, despite being the subject of a police inquiry.

Moran went into hiding after the affair, claiming that she was suffering from nervous exhaustion. Claiming to be sick, and being paid full wages in good faith, the silly cow got herself caught on camera touting for another job in PR because she had good contacts within the Labour party.

Other greedy fat cats, who had absolutely no need whatsoever of a payout to help them resettle to life again, but none the less got their grasping greedy trotters on our money yet again included: Douglas Hogg, Conservative, who is an Earl and who claimed for cleaning the moat on his castle; Conman Conway, who was thrown out of the Tories after overpaying his sons on his taxpayer-funded allowances to work as a parliamentary researcher, when in fact he had done zip all; Stephen Byers, Geoff Buffon Hoon and Patricia Hewitt, who were nabbed in the same cash for access scandal that Moran the moron was caught out in, all got the top whack as did Des Browne (imagine that... after being as useless as he was) and John Reid.

Then there was Andrew MacKay, who fiddled by registering his MP wife’s second home as his main address, thereby having 2 second homes in the family, and the unlovely David Heathcoat-Amory, who claimed for horse manure on his expenses. I wonder he would want to buy that stuff given the fact he spouts it every time he opens his mouth. All of the above claimed £65,000 on top of the money they are all given (£40,000) to wind up their offices and pay off their staff.

Lib Dem Julia Goldsworthy, who lost her seat at the tender age of 31 after five years after she claimed for a £1,200 rocking chair (she must think very highly of her posterior) and who went straight to work as advisor to Danny Alexander at an amazing £74,000-a-year, claimed her share of resettlement money. Greedy bitch.

The money to close down offices (pay rent till end of lease, give staff a small package, pay electricity, gas, etc) is not unreasonable. Money handed to MPs who wanted to go on but were flung out by their constituents, is perhaps permissible, although anyone else wouldn’t get anything like that kind of pay out. However, those who were standing down voluntarily, some over 70, should have got not a penny. Odious Nick Winterton (leaving because he’d be obliged to travel second class with plebs on trains if he stayed) and his unlovely wife, Anne (renowned for her racist jokes about dead Chinese cockle pickers) would have picked up about £130,000 despite the fact that they are in their dotage and planned to go anyway. (Redundancy payments are not normally made to people over the age of 64.)

It’s just another big fat slap in the face for us “ordinary people”. We hardly notice it; we’re used to being treated like David Heathcoat Amery’s estate...covered in manure...all 550 sacks of it.

THE RT. HON. DENIS MACSHANE, A GARAGE, AND £125,000

Denis MacShane looks as if he may be joining the hat woman Moran in the dock very shortly.

The Commons authorities have reported Den boy to the police after studying his claims for office space in his constituency which turned out to be his garage. At £20,000 a year (totalling some £125,000), paid to himself, it turned out to be a rather expensive garage...well, expensive for us, not him.

He also appears to have favoured his family when it came to getting work done. He submitted more than a dozen invoices for “research and translation” from an organization called the European Policy Institute, which just happens to be run by his brother.

As Europe minister, you would have thought that he would have been able to get any research or translating done for him by people in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office or by the government’s own EU offices in London.

He also claimed for 8 laptops in 3 years... I’m pretty sure that even working as hard as I’m sure Mr MacShane did, no one could wear out that many computers in such a short time. But of course he could have been taking after his boss, Mr Brown, but throwing laptops instead of Nokias!

MacShane is thought to be the first MP referred to the police by parliament. Let’s hope he’s not the last.

Just one last thought. When I was researching some pictures for this post I noticed that MacShane is in fact the Rt. Hon. Denis MacShane. Is it not time, given the dishonour that these people have brought upon themselves, upon the London parliament and upon the UK, that these ridiculous honorifics be ditched? They are not honourable nor are they right honourable. They shouldn’t be so addressed. If there is no mechanism for removing them from the Privy Council, then there should be.

Update

Mr MacShane is no longer a Labour MP having had the whip removed. (Hat tip to Guido)

Pics: Mr MacShane and his garage (a coat of pain wouldn't have gone amiss at £250K, don't you think?)

MARGARET MORAN MAY FACE CRIMINAL CHARGES

Oh Joy.....

At last the police are to investigate the behaviour of Margaret Moran, surely one of the worst offenders when it came to expenses.

Of course when the Telegraph released some details of how she had been fiddling, she was tout de suite on the telly saying that she would sue. That bravado (like Phil Woolas’s) disappeared when someone a bit brighter than her pointed out that...well, as she was guilty of all the Telegraph had printed and a good deal more, it might be better to shut up and hope it would go away.

It didn’t.

So today the Telegraph gets its own back on Mrs Moran for her little outburst by celebrating the fact that she is likely to be the 5th MP to be charged with abuse of taxpayer funded expenses. And in a lengthy article goes back over all of her little misdemeanours, including her most recent one, which unfortunately was caught on camera by undercover reporters working for a television programme.

The litany of alleged crimes for which she may be charged would make a lifer at H M Prison Barlinnie blush. False invoices, nonexistent companies, invented VAT numbers, work transferred from one address to another, some in houses which were not even hers, invoices for work which was never done, rejected claims re-presented with different wording...

...And of course turning up on a tv programme, being secretly filmed applying for a job as a lobbyist where she could use her influence (all girls together with Harriet Harman and Tessa Jowell) to help a private organisation seeking to have influence with the government. And all this, if you please, when she was signing off long term sick from parliament on full salary (having supposedly had a nervous breakdown over the expenses affair)...

Ho Hum... I can’t wait for this trial. I wonder if she will wear one of these idiotic hats (she must have got a job lot on expenses, orange, red....) to impress the judge...

WHAT A NICE FAIR COUNTRY WE LIVE IN

A soldier who was seriously wounded in Afghanistan in a case of friendly fire might lose out on a £25,000 insurance payout because he carried the Carling Cup on to the pitch at Wembley.

Private Dave Tatlock, 20, was spotted by the private insurance company ABACUS before the match between Manchester United and Aston Villa.

The guy was left temporarily paralysed after being hit by shrapnel two years ago and doctors said that he was unlikely to walk again. However he can now get about a bit, limping and in pain, with a stick. He lost the use of his calves and has severe nerve damage. He has no use of his left foot, wears a splint to walk and can move his right foot only slightly.

At Wembley he was seen limping unaided up from the tunnel to deposit the trophy at the side of the pitch, while a helper walked behind him with a crutch. Maybe a dream for him. Not much to ask when you have given your mobility for your country.

Kevan Jones, a minister at the Defence Department, who recently clashed with Joanna Lumley, said that MoD officials would demand explanation from ABACUS. He said he would be asking them to rethink their decision.

I’m not sure why a lad going to war with our Army has to take out personal insurance. It cost £56 a month from his meagre private’s salary and you really would have thought that a semi-civilised country could have managed to guarantee that, in the event of injury the country would look after their guys.

By strange co-incidence tonight I got round to watching the “Despatches” programme where seedy MPs and a Baroness prostitute themselves for £3000- £5000 a day, and something really strange hit me.

Maggie Moran, who tried to get away with £22,000 for the dry rot in her boyfriend’s flat was featured. Of course in the newspaper coverage she got little space because having never been anything of any import she was a lot less newsworthy than people who had once been something.

The programme documents how Moran, looking fit and well, turned up for an interview with the “set-up” company and offered her services “starting tomorrow”. Meanwhile she has not been present in the Commons for over 6 months, and when the presenter phoned her office for an interview, posing as a constituent, he was told that she was ill.

So in summary, on the one hand there’s this 20 year old lad who was sent to Afghanistan by the government, got shot up, is in a situation where, below the waist he’s pretty messed up, who had had to take out private insurance, and because he managed to limp a few steps (with someone following him with his crutches) his insurance payout is in jeopardy. On the other hand we have this MP who tried to fiddle money (and nearly got away with it) to do up her lad’s house, and who has, since she was caught, never put a foot in her constituency office or the House of Commons and is being paid full wages and will get over £50,000 stepping down money and her pension... and she’s caught out (again... is she a tad gullible or what?) and what’s going to happen to her? She probably won't go to the Lords.

What the hell kind of country do we live in?

I’ll just repeat the name of the insurance company by the way in case anyone missed it

It’s ABACUS ... now where are my insurance policies?

There is an update in the comments (below) taken from Abacus's website. I thought it fair to publish it alongside the story I wrote. The information in my post was garnered from The Times. I imagine that they checked their facts before publishing.

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THAT'S LIFE NADINE, THAT'S LIFE!

That Nadine Dorries is a complete fruit cake, no-one would dispute. She was the one who told us that MPs had been instructed to use their £24,000 allowance as salary in lieu of a pay increase, without it occurring to her that, should that have been the case they might well have been expected, like us ordinary mortals, to pay income tax on it!!!! Then she compared the completely reasonable investigation by the Daily Telegraph into MPs’ expenses, with the McCarthy Witch Hunts, saying that MPs were being driven to breakdowns and suicide because of it. (What a joke! The stupid woman should have known nearly everyone would get off scot free.)

In January this year, it was announced that she was being investigated by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards over her second home expenses and that there were a number of her neighbours queuing up to give evidence against her.

She recently took part in a reality tv show, despite having a full time job as an MP, where she was supposed to live in a council estate with only dole money to get her through, but was found to have secreted a £50 note in her undergarments, thus completely defeating the point of the show, and demonstrating horrific disrespect both to the project and to unemployed people in general.

We now, the bam pot has got stuck into Esther Rantzen who is standing as a clean up politics independent in Luton South. Dorries’ friend, Stephen Rhodes is standing against Ms Rantzen in the constituency, and she has pitched in calling Ms Rantzen a self publicist who has a scant understanding of politics.

Jeez, sometimes you think you’ve heard it all, then Nadine Dorries pops up again to brighten the day.

The Daily Telegraph reports that Dorries said: “I am afraid that Esther’s bid at politics is a rather transparent attempt to eject [sic] herself into the public eye once again, and probably to get some work on the back of it. Politics isn’t showbiz, it’s life.”

Ha ha. “That’s Life” Dorries you twerp. I wonder if she realized what she said. Somehow I doubt it. She strikes me as terminally dim.

Right. I’m no fan of Esther Rantzen, but whatever you say about her she has worked in consumer rights for many years with “That’s Life”, and over the last 20 years she has been closely associated with Child Line, a charity which takes calls from and aims to help children who have been bullied, or abused. Additionally she has campaigned for the recognition of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and work for people suffering deafness.

I suspect, therefore, that Esther Rantzen has forgotten more about the issues that ordinary people care about than the idiot Dorries, who seems to be a self publicist of the worst sort and not particularly in touch with the world outside her own head.

I dare say that Ms Rantzen will survive attacks from the likes of Nadine Dorries from whom criticism is a joke. But it’s the poor people of Luton South I feel sorry for. It is currently represented by Margaret Moran, a Labour MP forced to stand down at the next election over her expense claims despite her original intention to sue the backside off the Telegraph for the monstrous allegations leveled against her. Hum... I wonder what happened there then.....

The likelihood is that the arrival of Ms Dorries’ friend will split the independent vote leaving the way open for a Labour or Tory MP. I think that for all Nadine’s caterwauling Esther Rantzen would have made a good MP, as did Martin Bell. Once again it’s the people who lose out.


Picured: Nadine Dorries (top left) in the House of Commons but dressed for an afternoon’s shopping and (bottom right) Esther Rantzen.

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