Top 5 Piggy MPs
IPSA have released this year’s expenses figures. Here are the top five troughers:
- Greg Mulholland, LibDem, £188,783
- Stephen Gilbert, LibDem, £185,811
- Alistair Carmichael*, LibDem, £185,389
- Brian Donohoe, Labour, £182,003
- Willie Bain, Labour, £180,923
Once again Tory MP Philip Hollobone was the lowest claimant at just seven grand.
More to come this afternoon…
*Carmichael has to fly to Orkney and Shetland so has an excuse for high travel expenses.
UPDATE: Greg Mulholland’s office has sent Guido this statement explaining his high costs:
Mr Mulholland’s staffing costs were higher in 2011-12 than in previous years as a result of the ongoing health problems of two members of staff in his constituency office, both of whom were unable to work for more than six months. To ensure that he could continue to fulfil his parliamentary duties and work on behalf of his constituents he had no option but to apply to IPSA’s contingency budget, which provides additional funding to employ temporary staff to cover for sickness absence. The additional costs were closely scrutinised and approved by IPSA. Mr Mulholland is pleased that these problems of ill health have now passed and anticipates that his staffing costs will return to normal in the current year.
I thought they ere going to clean up politics?
Its your fucking rancid lot that are making it dirty…no Tories there I see except for being the lowest claimant at 7k.
i licks it when there is more problams with the politicions expensers
Cost of return flight from London Gatwick to Kirkwall Orkney via Aberdeen £255 x 52 = £13260. Claims for £185,389. Carmichael is paid it without question.
What fcuking planet are the people who vet this kind of shit on?
Whay times 52 – more like 30 at most! It’s not a full time job.
You have forgot how these things are made up. poor.
Expenses for travel are often 10-20k for northern england, and the guy in the orkneys might well be 30k.
The number probably includes about 23k for living expenses, and 80k for staffing.
Ah, but your forgetting, chauffeur car to and from the airports, and caviar on toast, Churchill’s bespoke brogue shoes, and all that troughing stuff, and then there’s “entertainment” expenses and biscuits from Fortnum & Mason, Hampers, Drinks at the bar, “business” lunches, office expenses, and all those “mere bagatelles”.
Another good reason for Scotch independence.
Aren’t they Scottish names ?
Aye but the English pay laddie.
Will that affect the price of a bottle
of “Isle of Jura” Malt Whisky, Jimmy?
I am sure that that Guido will want to know !
The media (including Guido) need to make a distinction between staffing costs and expenses, for a start. The majority of the money in these figures does not go to MPs, they are salaries for staff. The people complaining about expenses would be the first to complain if MPs had no staff to answer their letters and phonecalls etc.
Which leads to another point – why do some media praise MP who haven’t spent much on ‘expenses’? Often that just means they haven’t employed any/sufficient staff and are likely to be providing a very poor service to their constituents…
you must have a really hard working mp with tons of staff for him to claim £185k on top of the £65k salary, many mps are ok many not but value for money does not even enter the equation these days, just more tax money going down the drain in my humble opinion.
Why oh why, is this not classed as fraud?
Because oh because it is within the rules.
Lefties. Good at spending other people’s money!
Are these people all jock MPs?
Higher travel costs, etc…?
No.
Greg Mulholland – leeds north west
Stephen Gilbert – cornwall.
Brian Donohoe – ayrshire
Willie Bain – glasgow north east
Cornwall does not have an MP.
It has more than one. As does ayrshire.
And your point is?
Distance travelled.
What was your point apart from wierd and innacurate pedantry.
denzil is moor of a twat than kebab man
My point is that Cornwall does not have an MP.
If you go to the trouble of leeds north west or glasgow north east then why not St Austell & Newquay? Or Clay tip & Shit tip if you want to be really accurate.
OK denzil I shall be more precise or equally imprecise next time.
Greg Mulholland – somewhere up northish.
Stephen Gilbert – pasty eater.
Brian Donohoe – south Jock.
Willie Bain – middle jock.
BTW: would you say that a cat doesn’t have a paw?
I feel the need for a little piano wire.
I hope you play a show tune babe!
The fuckers will dance, that’s for sure!
LOL!!!
Philip is my local MP and I have been in correspondence recently about the lousy QE2 bridge at Dartford and the delays there.I get a reply by return and copies of all correspondence.If he can do it why not the others?
Use the fucking tunnel instead!
My MP (Julian Lewis) is similarly prompt and efficient.
They are not all troughing thieving lazy bastards.
Correction. They’re not all lazy. For instance, Tim Yeo is very hard-working.
So if you take an approximate average of £100K per MP for expenses, that works out to a total of £65 million for the whole troughing lot!
We are clearly not ‘all in it together’.
PS and that’s not icluding the troughers in the HoL!
I bet there’s only about 4 MP’s who claim less than £100k.
Most of them are pretty close to those upper levels.
I note three of the five represent Scottish constituencies. Don’t believe all the crap about Scottish MP’s justifying higher levels of expenses because their constituencies are so far away from Westminster. Most constituency matters that affect ordinary people – education, health, police, etc – are the responsibility of the Scottish Parliament, in which case I really don’t know what the Westminster contingent does with its time. Westminster MP’s from Scotland should be among the lowest expense claimers – not the highest.
Perhaps you’d like to see the same sort of list without transport to and from constituency then.
Now that would make for a better analysis. Break it down by travel, living costs, staffing and whatever else and show us the money.
that breakdown is all publicly available – people/media just choose not to use it! Laziness or deliberately misleading?
Why don’t these Scottish MPs frequent the Scottish Parliament? Why are they in London in the first place? Labour would sink in the HOC if it wasn’t for these greedy scotch gits.
As much as I hate the “troughers” (a lot) I do note that all but one of these MP’s represent constituencies that are very much removed from London:
Stephen Gilbert, LibDem, St Austell and Newquay – £185,811
Alistair Carmichael, LibDem, Orkney and Shetland – £185,389
Brian Donohoe, Labour, Central Ayrshire – £182,003
Willie Bain, Labour, Glasgow North East – £180,923
The top piggy, Greg Mulholland, (LibDem) is “only” in Leeds North West but managed to squeeeeze £188,783 out of the system. The others will have much bigger expenses for living in London because they are well away from town so they are, in some respects, forgiven…. Doesn’t stop them from being one step removed from bacon though.
I note that the biggest single chunk of anyone’s expenses are staffing costs, not travel.
Employing your wife, mistress, son and daughter, doesnea come cheap laddie. Now be on your way.
LOL Agreed! Oink oink..
Bet the BBC dont publish this list, probably just the number of torys in top 100
The BBC certainly aren’t going to publish their own secret list of troughers despite numerous FOI disclosure attempts.
There are ways to manage this piss taking. But they won’t be implemented.
Oink oink oink.
I am so glad I stopped being involved with the LibDems.
Someone please tell me Mr “Low-Tory’s” name isn’t pronounced as written.
Labour and Lib Dems-their only expertise is spending other people’s money.
What a bunch of scrounging c.u.n.ts. I’m going to take them outside and shoot them in front of their families.
Queue jumper
Can I watch?
They seem rather good at that practice in France Jeremy!
And then shoot their families, to stop them claiming as dependants.
No one’s piggier than me. Oink oink!
Don’t say horrible things about me or my rent-a-shrink will say I’m suicidal.
Have you stood trial yet Maggie? Hope you go down for quite a long time, but I doubt!
Didn’t you hear? My rent-a-shrink got me off the hook! Woop woop!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-17876735
Those figures are astounding at £180,000 + get a dormitory block built and give them a pre-paid oyster card.
Dormitories…who mentioned dormitories?
Dorneywood ? Crocquet and cock !
these are not figures for expenses – a very small part of these totals are for accommodation expenses, for example – but are mostly made up of staff salaries which are paid to staff, not MPs
Shock ! Horror !!
They’re all fucking socialists !
Comments are the radioactive waste of the Web
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/micwright/100007520/comments-are-the-radioactive-waste-of-the-web/
180k expense fucking thieving scum…and they have the front to pick on disabled benefit claimants the fucking fuckpuppet lowlife scum
Really look forward to see what Julian Smith has claimed. Awful MP, he should never have got selected let alone elected.
Guido look at what you are missing by not standing in the Corby by-election if you won, cheap travel, cheap booze, cheap food plus Dirty Des might pay you more for your column, and all those nice friendly natives in the shire not to mention in the town
The two staff who are off-sick? Are on full pay?? They should put the two c***ts on SSP like the rest of the industry!
So it’s official. Tories really do make people sick.
On wonders what service constituents get from an MP who only claims £7,000. If they are funding there office and all the staff to help with casework out of their own pocket then that is all well and good but unless we want all MPs to be independently wealthy then it isn’t reasonable to expect that to be the norm.
The explanation from Mr Mulholland seems entirely reasonable.
He hasn’t got an office. If you want to see this mp you have to meet him at the local Tory club. Hardly very private or confidential for that matter.
Mulholland does have an Office, I live not far from it and he is my MP. He rents it in one of the lowest rent places in the area. Admittedly it is in a shopping arcade so he is visible to his constituents. But it’s not a place he’ll be paying much for. His next door neighbours are a charity shop, a christian cafe, a social centre and a chippy.
He’s a popular MP up here though. Apart from his high expenses (Second time now) I’ve never heard anyone complain about his work. He’ll probably survive the next election even if the rest of the Lib Dems are wiped out. The reason the LD’s are high on this list is because they know they don’t stand much of a chance in the next election.
And just to clarify, having read Redinwhite’s comment. Yes I think he is an excellent constituency MP as well and I’ll be continuing to vote for him and if the LD’s are wiped out and he survives, it’ll be for a reason.
you are picking on the wrong guy by fingering Greg Mulholland – he works his socks off as a constituency MP, lives in an end terraced house and rents a bog standard flat in London for Westminster duties. The stuff about his staff sickness issues is real – don’t try to imply that he is one of those with ‘snouts in the trough’ – nothing could be further from the truth.
By the way, I haven’t been asked to say this – I simply know him to be a first class constituency MP and a decent person, which makes him rare in that place.
I’m coming late to this, but I was at Uni with Greg and yes, he is a very decent bloke. Never had a problem with him. Good laugh, good bloke.
Got the usual stories, obviously, but that’s nobody’s business. The photo’s are my pension, if he makes it big!!
To all the naysayers get a life. If you represent anywhere from 40,000 to 70,000 people and do the job properly you will need staff and an office to deal with the issues they raise,it’s part of the job otherwise how are people going to get help from them.
In addition if you live a distance away from London then you will need somewhere to stay while you are there unless you plan on sleeping on a park bench.
The expenses system is still heavily scrutinised. fair enough if there going round buying duck houses or having moats re dug but you can’t criticise them for employing people within their constituency offices.
You’d soon complain if you couldn’t get in touch with them!
What is the telephone number for your constituency office?
He hasn’t got one to my knowledge as my mp doesn’t have a constituency office. Mr hollobone doesn’t deem it important enough for me to have somewhere where I can go and see him in private.
Hasn’t taken long for piglet Willie Bain (Glasgow) to grow up into a super-trougher.
MPs’ staff on the sick should get SSP only £85.85p per week, and it is potentially fair to dismiss for capability if off sick.
I wonder if the sick employees have any other connections to that MP and/or his party?
Why weren’t the staff who went sick for 6 months sacked? I couldn’t get away with it in my job.
All these MP’s will have legitimate reasons for having such nice expenses. But this does give voters, a continuing view of noses in the trough and what’s in it for me attitudes. Then they wonder why the voters don’t bother to vote at all. Democracy destroying itself slowly.