Sir Nicholas and Lady Winterton are retiring to “pass the baton to a younger person”. Let us not forget that they were found to have broken Commons rules in a critical report by Parliamentary Standards Commissioner John Lyon last year. Guido covered it at length here.
After paying off the mortgage on their Belgravia flat, the troughing couple transferred the £700,000 property to a family trust controlled by their children, and then charged the rent on it to parliamentary allowances. A scam that netted the family trust some £120,000. It was called “indefensible” by Cameron at the time. They paid back not a single penny.
Post links to sleaze stories in the comments and Guido will summarise them here. It is a dirty job, but someone has to do it…
Andy Burnham was assisted by the Common’s authorities who bent the rules after he got a bung from a property developer and managed to over-claim in the same year by £10,000. More support for Guido’s thesis that the Palace of Westminster is less about public service and more like gangster racketeering.
Eric Joyce has claimed over a million, paying zero capital gains tax on his property flipping over the years. He told the Mail on Sunday that this ‘This conversation may have cost me £160,000’, it will hopefully cost him his seat as well. Though he will have sworn year after year on his tax return that he was making a full and true statement. A criminal offence.
LibDem MP Malcolm Bruce managed to claim for two different properties simultaneously. Cleverly he put his wife on the payroll at his constituency home and used the incidental expenses provision to feather bed that home and the ACA to featherbed his London home. Guido thought he new every trick in the book by now, this is a new one. Bruce won’t tell us how much he paid his wife. Our money into his household income and he wants it to be kept secret?
Angela Browning, a former Tory minister, claimed £10,000 for her website, which looks like it took three hours to throw together. She claimed for the usual long list of interior design features including the kitchen sink (£2,714). Worse than Jacqui Smith…
Derek Conway tried to claim for a £160 pig-skin wallet. How appropriate.
The news isn’t all bad, according to the Sunday Times half the occupants of the parliament of whores could be swept away on the tide of righteous anger sweeping the nation. Guido is betting on 50 resigning or standing down in disgrace and perhaps a 100 more incumbents suffering the wrath of the fleeced voting taxpayers – over and above party swings. The Sunday Times reckons 325 troughers will be forced onto their index-linked gold-plated pensions. Guido’s heart bleeds…
Expect more revelations tomorrow about his wife Julie Kirkbride MP. Ian McCartney, former chairman of the Labour Party, and literally a champagne socialist who had the taxpayer buy his champagne flutes on expenses is going as well. So it begins…
UPDATE : Interesting and revealing blog from within the constituency hall from Mark Thompson. It was pretty bad, no wonder why he went. This is the way it is going to be for troughers…
Dizzy has the scoop:
Some interesting developments have happened overnight. Nadine Dorries has seen the blog part of her website instantly taken down after she made allegations against the owners of the Telegraph Group, Sir David Barclay and Sir Frederick Barclay.
Lawyers acting for the Barclay brothers, Withers, instructed the takedown to Acidity via mail last night, citing the Acceptable User Policy. The takedown will be bolstered by the Godfrey vs Demon precendent, where an order can be made and it will be done instantly.
She did make some off the wall allegations on the blog, she is clearly angry with the Telegraph, but accusing the Barclay brothers of setting out to destabilise the political establishment because they favour UKIP and the BNP was a bit barmy. It did lead Guido to suggest yesterday that Nadine Needs a Holiday.
The blog is still available in the Google cache.
The Telegraph has put out this tactful explanation as to how they came into possession of the discs. Note no mention of money changing hands.
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1137883380
