Lembit has taken a bit of a gamble with his curious bid to be the LibDem candidate who will come a poor third to Boris and Ken. His Citizen Smith campaign video spoof is certainly a little unnerving in parts. You can’t help but notice toward the end that old Lembit’s enjoying himself a bit too much. Is it a head-shot?
It seems almost as if there is at least one keen voter he’s met…
Laurie Penny’s spectacular hyperbole:
“The difference between Tahrir Square and Parliament Square is one of scale, but not of substance”
For some reason the Assistant Government Whip Bill Wiggin is avoiding these questions:
“This therefore is an expenses claim for one thing that you now state was spent on other costs. It is also completely undocumented and you have produced no corroborating receipts or indeed any evidence that the money was in fact put to the purposes you claim.
Why was the invoice, which you signed off in order to put it on your Parliamentary expenses, at best incorrect and at worst deliberately deceptive?”
Over to John Lyon then. Yet again.
See also :
Hip-hop headphones, an iPad, no cufflinks, an off the peg suit and a manbag was enough to drive Westminster villagers into an in-depth discussion about Dave’s new comms chief Craig Oliver and his modern metro style. But have they all been spun a yarn?
On the first day Oliver, who left the BBC with not love lost apparently, was dressed up like a truly modern gadget man, yet by his second day he looked a little more like someone going to steer the entire government communications machine. Where were the glasses and notebooks before? Surely Guido is being too cynical to think, as others have suggested, that it was all for show?
It has just got worse for Bill Wiggin. He now says that the invoice Guido highlighted yesterday for room hire was actually used for other things. There’s a word for that…
His statement doesn’t dig him out of his hole:
“The Association secretary was acting as Mr Wiggin’s constituency secretary during the period of 12 months ended 31st March 2007 which meant that she dealt with parliamentary business as well as surgeries. Thus the invoice of £5,000 authorised and paid by the Parliamentary Fees Office in May 2007 covered the whole cost to the Association of parliamentary business as well as organising surgeries for Mr Wiggin during that 12 months. This covered the secretary’s time, telephone, postage, printing and related costs not just room hire for the various venues. Surgeries took place approximately every fortnight in various venues around the constituency which included Tenbury Wells, Ledbury, Bromyard, Kington and villages as well as Leominster itself.”
Yet the invoice explicitly stated the money was specifically for room hire “in the association office”:
By his own admission this claim is false.
Wiggin also said on the phone that he did not write the invoice. Obviously not, but he did expense it from the Fees Office, thus if his statement is true, he knowingly put in a false claim. Jim Devine, facing sentencing next week, got into trouble for using fake invoices from printers to spend taxpayers money on other things, such as staff. Or so he said.
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