Hague’s Taxpayer Funded Snake Stuffing
When Guido heard that William Hague had stuffed a 20-foot anaconda in the Foreign Office, he just had to find out how much the taxpayer was being billed. The answer is an eye-watering £10,000. But what followed was perhaps the greatest FOI response of all time:
“‘Albert’ the anaconda was allegedly presented by a Bishop, in what is now Guyana, to the Colonial Secretary in the 19th century – exact names and dates are unknown. However, he appears in a photo from circa 1892, which means he has been in the FCO for at least 120 years. As a gift to the FCO, Albert is therefore regarded as an FCO asset. As such, the FCO is obliged to maintain its assets, and the work on ‘Albert’ was essential maintenance. It is believed that ‘Albert’ was first re-stuffed in the 1960s or 1970s, but there are no records of how much it cost on that occasion. Certainly no significant maintenance has been carried out on him in the last 40-50 years. ‘Albert’ was never housed in a glass case, as is commonly believed. In moving him from his suspended position in the Ansell Library (a separate Library area to the old Home Office Library referenced above) to facilitate planned refurbishment to the area it was observed he was in poor condition. A decision was taken to use this opportunity to carry out a refurbishment to ‘Albert’ including a safety check on the suspension fittings. The cost of the conservation and restoration work on ‘Albert’ was £10,000. The work was undertaken by the Conservation Team at the Natural History Museum, over a 5-week period, from 21 May to 26 June 2012. As nothing was known about previous work done on ‘Albert’, the conversation team at the NHM needed to use x-ray CT scanning, which is a costly procedure that required extensive data processing and a specialist to do the analysis. Also, the level of detailed, delicate work in the restoration involved an intensive amount of care and attention from highly trained staff.”
Austerity, what austerity?
Oink oink!
Nice to know a stuffed snake doesnt have to wait for a CT scan, but hundreds of tax payers have to wait months to get one.
Un-ba-fucking-lieveable !
This Hague 20′ Snake must be a mythical beast. I’ve never seen it.
Own goal?
When was the last time that you got a good stuffing?
Did Hague consult his proctologist before hand as to the snakes suitability ?
its a bloody good way of exhibiting peter mandelson…
One of his aides did if i remember the headline correctly
Let them eat cake.
Let them eat snake – you always hear what you want to see.
Good point made!
You pay for a CT scan, you can get one TODAY.
You wait for your ration on the National Death Service and you’ll probably die.
To be honest it’s probably best and a greater kindness, to let the sick die.
I’ll be sure to come round next time you feel a bit poorly and see how you feel then Nurse.
Stuffing the snake-beating labour.
I’m a one-eyed snake, wibble.
A trousered snake.
austerity…what austerity.
Global personal which run 6,000 dating websites admits to setting up fake profiles in order to lure the emotionally needy, to part with their hard earned roubles.
the same emotionally needy who at young age fell prey to Jimmy saville.
why be emotionally needy?
A slippery snake. How apt!
THere are many snakes left in Westminster that could all do with stuffing. No need to hange them up after though.
How many snakes in Westminster should be hanged… never mind the stuffing.
Any jokes about William Hague, a snake, and getting a stuffing, should be sent elsewhere.
Why? They’re funny.
Couldn’t they have chucked it in the bin?
That would be a waste – better to use as draft excluder for very big door. It would demonstrate their green credentials
Whats vaz doing hanging from the ceiling
+ 100
If it was really Vaz there’d be snake oil dripping down.
+3 1/2
£10K – it just doesn’t adder up
Load of old cobras if you ask me
You must be sidewinding me up…….
A lot of mamba jambo
…and in these (boa) constricted times too
Should have stuck it in a krait and stored in the basement
all this talk about the squeezed middle
This will viper the smile off his face
I adder that Hague in the back of my cab once…
Wonder who grass-ed him up ?
Hague should be shot, with a boa and arrow
It should have been scaled down. Somebody’s been taking the hiss.
Hague’s gonna get it in the asp for this one!
Fangs for that
I’ve had it with these mother-fucking snakes in this mother-fucking Foreign Office!!
Venom I going to see Hague apologise for this extravangance?
Only if he’s rattled.
Austerity for us plebs, same old crap from the “elite”.
Hague stuffed an anaconda? When he had the gorgeous Ffion to gome to? Extraordinary behaviour.
No it isn’t.
tbf, he does give her a goodnight hiss.
At least Torys waste money on nice right-wing things like re-stuffing imperial era snake-gifts.
Phew.
I feared the worst when I saw the words William Hague and stuffed.
Does he pass for rough trade with his Cabinet colleagues?
I hate snakes and why are all the bookshelves empty?
Would you put books up there with a bloody big snake nearby?
True. It’s horrific!
It’s only a tiddler you should have seen the one that got away. It’s still trying to get back as the EU Emperor Blair the Great Snake.
Didn’t Labour sell off the FCO Library as it reminded them of Britain’s past glories, and no socialist wants to be reminded of that. The same way as they closed down the FCO Language School as obviously you don’t want your diplomats speaking the local lingo.
There is a line in the 1943 film “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” where two German officers enter the British Embassy in Berlin (circa 1901) and ask the receptionist, in German, if he speaks German. The receptionist replies, in German “Yes, of course.” It was reported a few years ago that only two of the forty odd staff at the British Embassy in Kabul could speak Dari of Pashto. Thanks comrades.
Dari OR Pashto.
There is a part in “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” where a German officer says:
“You know that, after the war, we had very bad years in Germany. We got poorer and poorer. Every day retired officers or schoolteachers were caught shoplifting. Money lost its value, the price of everything rose except of human beings. We read in the newspapers that the after-war years were bad everywhere, that crime was increasing and that honest citizens were having a hard job to put the gangsters in jail. Well in Germany, the gangsters finally succeeded in putting the honest citizens in jail”
Sounds like those struggling due to EU imposed austerity and protesting in Spain right now!
Thank you, I remember that bit well. I am surprised that the film was made at all, and am not surprised that Churchill tried to ban it, especially since we were at war at the time. It was a very pro-German film, but pro the German people, and pro German civilisation, as opposed to Nazi civilisation.
I’m particularly struck by the section in 1919 where Theo, the officer that you quoted, is invited to dinner by Clive before he is repatriated and a large number of the dinner guests tell him the same thing – we want to be friends, we want to TRADE with Germany, and if we trade with each other it will be good for both of us.
What a waste of money.
I’d rather stuff my fat face any day.
That amount of money would keep me in food for a month!
When Guido heard that William Hague had stuffed…
I thought
Oh no…OMG Are we going to get another shower of shit…?
To match Jimmy Soapville?
It’s can’t get much worse at the moment except if we have some zoophilia…or cannibalism perhaps…
Fucking Bigot! You’re nicked!
Yes but note how Albert is suspended next to all those empty library shelves. The FCO library was once a magnificent collection, but all was sold under the expert guidance of one D Milliband. At least Albert has been saved.
Did D Milliband pocket the proceeds?
Knowing News Labour and all that…
Sorry, just seen your comment. Should have looked first before posting at (currently) 77.
It seems like it wasn’t only the snake that got stuffed.
Sad that Albert went to the happy hunting ground so long ago, he could have eaten Nick Clegg in Cabinet and done us all a favour.
They could have just hung mandelson and saved ten grand
Dianne Abbott and Emily Thornberry are to be the front row props on labour’s new all women rugby team.
also appearing in Hewett’s Hulking Hod Humper Gymnastic Team
And the hooker ?
Sally perhaps?
FOI reply is actually trying to justify the £10K…Unbelievable
The last Gov were winding down the foreign office…it is pretty pointless post. EU covered by Europe minister, International Development and home office remits cover many overseas issues.
It seems that Billy Boy Hague likes the foreign office, cushy number, lots of travel ( to cover lack of off spring ) , and spending tax payers money on sh*ite
This website has become piss poor over the last year or so. Seriously, it’s either trivial beyond words or so coated in bile that it’s bad for one’s health reading it.
That sounds like a description of labour under Millionaireband.
Who are you ?
Are you a sixth former ?
Do you think sterling is overvalued ?
Have you ever visited Wales ?
Sounds like Labour, full stop. Only they never had a “golden age” – they’ve always been nasty, vicious bastards.
fuck off you twat this blog is epic.
Please take your refund, stuff it where the sun don’t shine, and fuck off.
New Labour has now been officially replaced by Cynical Hypocritical Labour.
The product’s the same, the name’s changed so it does what it says on the tin.
FOI reply is actually trying to justify the £10K…Unbelievable
The last Gov were winding down the foreign office…it is pretty pointless post. EU covered by Europe minister, International Development and home office remits cover many overseas issues.
It seems that Bil*ly Boy Ha*gue likes the foreign office, cushy number, lots of travel ( to cover lack of off spring ) , and spending tax payers money on sh*ite
No doubt you took advantage of the Muslim prayer area in Ed Balls office after he blew £3 million quid to turn an office of state into a chillaxed Islamic Bauhaus-esque nightmare?
THE SUN
“HAGUE TROUSERS £10,000 SNAKE”
I didnt know that “rent” was that expensive
SPAD
specialy proportioned anaconda dick
14 Pints would love that
John Prescott wants to know if anyone will pass him Anna Conda’s phone number.
Another ten grand hissed away by useless politicians
I’d pay £ 10,000 to have Little Johnny B13 COW stuffed rigid and hung from the ceiling.
Thats his wifes job
And we thought it was Mandelson who liked lengthy Latin Americans…!
Those now-empty bookshelves were once stuffed with fascinating books, making up the priceless FO Library. The library was broken up and flogged off – an act that could be described as the FO’s kr’istall’nact – by… one D. Miliband. Utter, utter bastard.
From Hague’s speech just over a year ago:
“It is ironic that the only object to survive the gutting of the library is a one hundred year old twenty-foot stuffed anaconda known as Albert, who remains suspended over the empty bookshelves, while the books from the period when such an unusual foreign gift found its way into the Foreign Office have been dismantled around it, and can never be reassembled. To my mind the fate of the FCO library is emblematic of a gradual hollowing out of the qualities that made the FCO one of our great institutions.”
Full speech here, made just over a year ago:
http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2011/09/08/william-hague-foreign-office-speech-in-full
Don’t bash Hague for this one, Guido; it’s his predecessor who should be strung up like Albert.
What an incredible act of vandalism !
Shows what a tosser is Miliband . He must have taken his cue from Hitler’s Germany.
One of the very few positive things to be said about Ed is that he was preferable from his vile, self-obsessed, self-entitled prat of a brother who was just about the worst Foreign Secretary since the 30′s.Remember the pig’s arse of a trip the clown made to India? Offended everyone.
Arthur George Bottomley, Baron Bottomley, OBE, PC Wilson’s Foreign Secretary – arrived in The Gambia saying how pleased was he to be in Zambia
I think he was Commonwealth Secretary-a long forgotten post.
British history has to be destroyed comrade. Only then will the British grasp their new identity as citizens of the EUSSR.
How many libraries have closed in the last two years, ? So afew posh books for posh boys counts forfuck all up here,we burn our books to heat our gruel.
I’m happy with this restoration; lovely old object and they could spend it on much worse things
Taxpayers on the NHS could only dream of such prompt & extensive expertise & treatment.
This, like Ed Balls £3 million office upgrade before he got kicked out, is indicative of the political elites utter contempt for the taxpayer & OUR money.
The NHS is run for the benefit of the staff, not for the patients. That’s why they want to keep it. Not having customers makes it much easier to hide failure.
Double hotel rooms don’t come cheap.
But if you, Foxy and Laws share a room together, it will save money.
Boris — Your Country Needs You — Do a Brutus on Dave forthwith, and an Edward II on Hague immediately afterwards.
Bill Cash on working with David Cameron “I dwell amid pinheaded weasels who know only timid, the generic and the abacus.”
I haven’t got a twitter account, so I just carry around a megaphone to announce what I’m doing at random times.
I’ve got three followers so far, but I think two are cops.
How much do the 648 snakes in the House of Commons cost us?
Hmmmmm…………..Bishop……Prince Albert……..Hague…hmmmm.
Dont bash the Bishop
I have just had to take another one of my Beta-Blocker blood pressure tablets after reading the news that a dead snake gets a CT scan and a £10,000 pound makeover.
“How about I give you a 20-ft anaconda?”, said the Bishop to the Secretary.
No word on whether he had also offered it to the actress the same way.
“…… the conversation team at the NHM needed to use x-ray CT scanning,”
Presumably to give them a conversation topic.
I know – ten grand just to talk about it . . .
What tripe!
Good for a laugh but I don’t begrudge Hague or FCO their £10k stuffed snake. What I do find shocking is the UK’s social security bill of around £160 billion and growing-a lot of it funding wasters both home grown and imported.
May A ll ah pour his peace on you.
50% of m*sl*m men and 75% of ditto women, have NEVER worked and live entirely on benefits. Now pay your taxes and smile as you do serfs.
No stuffed Stags? What is this world coming too?
Two timing bitch !
he usually stuffs me with his snake
Oh for heavens sake get a life. This is a non story of epic proportions and shouldn’t even be given the Internet space.
If Obama wins next week, I do hope you righties don’t revert to form and have him killed. You tend to do that kind of thing when your side don’t get in.
?
Murder & violence are the domain of the left – Oswald shot kennedy on the orders of KGB Stalinists.
Personally, I like the way Obama is changing the rules of engagement with the West’s enemies.
Even Great Britain is now increasing its drone squadrons for remote engagement with enemies of our gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
I know this policy of remote engagement is working because I heard a loud a lefties bleating about it on BBC Radio 4 this week, & using taxpayer money to fight the policy through the courts.
But President Obama thinks it is the right thing to do, so that should be enough for you fellow travellers.
Have a nice day.
Sandra – do you give good head?
Personally I think that it more use to take the bastards alive and then squeeze them for every last drop of information than to kill them and risk collateral damage. It worked in Iraq, but of course O’Bummer doesn’t like the idea of boots on the ground.
http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/6785.htm Too bad Obama didn’t respond to the help request on the 9th in Benghazi – where were the drones and why was a General arrested for trying to save the staff? Readalllboudit
I don’t think I have any problem with this. Clearly its a historic item and we are a country with a rich and interesting history. It was in no individual’s benefit to re-stuff the snake – so as long as it doesn’t turn out that somebody’s cousin happens to be a snake-stuffer, or whatever, this is fine by me. It needed doing and if it hadn’t been done we’d have thrown away an interesting and unique bit of our heritage. Snake or no snake.
Only a transferred cost from museum.
Bollocks, it’s just a dead snake.
Well, this is unbelievable. And, by unbelievable, I mean entirely predictable. When in Rome.
Three former Penn State administrators were charged on Thursday with conspiring to cover up the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.
Although THEY have prison overcrowding …..60 years!
Now this is one Americanism we could import.
ref
http://www.breakingnews.com/topic/penn-state-ex-coach-child-sex-case
Jerry Sandusky is being placed in a maximum-security facility under what amounts to “death row” conditions, because, due to his age, and as a convicted child molester and “celebrity” convict, he may be targeted for stabbing by other inmates.
Not to mention by every degenerate gambler in the place, convicts and some warders, who ever lost a bundle on a Penn State game.
Perfect for the nest of snakes in the Foreign Offhissssssss
What’s the fuss about?
If it’s OK with Baldy……its tickety boo with me.
You owe me Baldy.
Who mentioned a snake-in-the-ass?
I name that tune in one.
Go Wild in the Country – Bow Wow Wow.
Why are they selling Ted Heath’s house?
Nowt to do wi me
OK, so how much to Stuff and Mount The Wuss, then suspend him from the ceiling. or Mount then Stuff, or just Stuff ( Lowest Cost ), we leave the Suspension from the Wooden Beams, to you imagination.
Repairing the building’s historical artefacts held in trust for the nation? Ridiculous! Next thing you know, they’ll be fixing broken windows and putting the heating on when the temperature outside is still above zero!
I can assure you that William’s snake is much sorter than reported.
Having taken a special interest in our William’s parliamentary expenses over the last few years this little story hardly surprises me .
Having wasted all that taxpayer money shouldn’t it be presented to someone in Brussels/
Jimmy Savile was hideously white.
And not a Kike
Err No!! savile was just Hideous!!
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUuugghhhhhh
on so many levels.
from the FOI twat who probably took most of the morning to write the reply,
to an FCO who only want to live in the past.
so don’t be surprised when Venezuela or wherever does an Elgin Marbles claim on squidgy Albert.
Great sleuthing Guido, once the system exposes itself as perpetually ridiculous, it falls. The more of these snippets, the merrier.
Jesus fucking wept.
Is there no end to incompetent buffoons wasting our tax pounds?
£10K! What do those *ucking snakes at the F.O. think they are throwing our money at, another example of the whitehall village not living in the real world.
Shame no one swapped it for Mandelson at birth. Wouldn’t have been noticed. One reptile looks very much like another.
£10k to stuff a snake?
How fucking much do broomshanks cost in London?
and what’s it stuffed with, £10 notes?
I reckon 3 bags of polystyrene beans about £1 wholesale should be enough to stuff a 20ft snake.
And what was the point of paying for private healthcare to give it a CT Scan? The fucking thing is dead for fucks sake.
Well I’ll admit that’s a bit offensive given that YoungNells is really poorly with a possible tummy growth. Her NHS consultant has ordered an urgent scan and it has taken us more than 10 days to get one. She’ll have it tomorrow and we expect it will take at least 14 days for the result to reach her consultant before he can decide what to do .
Obviously snakes are more important than children!
The Foreign Office have a mousecatcher and clock winder on their staff! (excuse the pun but I’m not winding you up either)
I can confirm that William’s trouser snake is indeed a big one.
There are bigger snakes called georgerobertson, bliar and gordonbrown . bliar of course put out a DNotice to protect them from allegations regarding children . Why was that?
No doubt the FCO will use a foreign contractor to restuff the Snake.
Perhaps they could sponsor an Anaconda at Regents Park Zoo and then use that as an incentive to further reduce departmental Costs?
Common sense says it should have been put in storage until the austerity measures are lifted. Then, does common sense work with politicians?
I could have done it through some contacts for £500
Guido, there are times and this is one of them when you sound like a cross between Ken Livingstone and Caroline Lucas – a wet-blanket, a miserabllist, a fun-hater, a killjoy.
Lighten up.
Am enjoying myself immensely.
what a suprise of costs. But aren’t Alberts costs effortable? Please imagine restaurations of elephants or crocodiles?
Iv not see his trouser ‘snake’ for years.
I fail to see how Albert can be considered an asset, when it’s been hidden from the public for 120 years?
For a government that considers the old and sick, ‘useless eaters’ (New World Order speak) and pleads poverty, while paying bungs of millions of pounds abroad, and to the EU, austerity only applies to us, Plebs.
I don’t like this government and I dislike it only marginally less than the bunch befreo.
But where did any Minister in either of them describe the old and sick as “useless eaters”?
Bury it. I would come to a funeral for an old snake! : )
I support the expenditure on this. Snake. It is a valuable piece of history which should be preserved for the nation
Leave the snake alone. Unbelievably the FCO employ more staff now than at the very height of Empire.
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