Named In Dispatches

Courtesy: Department of International Development (the irony)

I can't say much about this hideous thing because I'm sort of still trying to process what I've just seen. But I will say this.

I find it utterly soul-destroying that these people, all of them Labour ministers either interviewed in the sting or fingering ministers still in power in one position or another (including that sickening, unblinking crook Mandelson yet again), are so much worse as people than so many people I've met in my lifetime and career so far. I simply cannot imagine what my father thinks of it all.

The point is that these people are so corrupt, they would sooner burn this country to the ground than be forced into a position where they must confront the twin characteristics that define them all, to a man and to a woman: vanity and greed. Vanity and greed is what defines this entire government, and this government's vanity and greed is what has brought this country to the brink of ruin. We were safer in the Cold War than we are with these.

Just remember, prior to this devastating Blair/Brown era, governments were brought down for far, far less than this, and rightly so.

I can't think of anything else to say just now. I'm just too depressed by the level of venality and decay this country has been brought to thanks to a desperately serious, though perhaps innocent in the case of a fair few million voters, false step that we took in 1997.

A lot of people were conned by Labour, but all are punished.

To me, though, there is some kind of hope. The Conservative Party, under Cameron, I believe has genuinely sensed the mood of the people (the people that count, that is - the vast majority of people - and not that small minority of dumb, insolent, loudmouth Labour activists who just don't care because their obsessive political prejudices always take precedence over truth, justice and common decency).

The Conservative Party, under Cameron, really will mend our broken politics, mainly because they had bloody well better! So thank God for that, because, as this terrifying Dispatches programme shows, our politics is just about as broken as it could possibly be.

And Labour broke it.

Byers' Song

Loving the National Express as Stephen Byers clearly does - after all, he saved that company £300million by putting the fix in with "Lord" Andreas Adonis, who obligingly let it off the hook precisely in the way Byers describes he'd arranged with him in the undercover Channel 4 tapes, by nationalising the rail franchise they were contracted to run, but had comprehensively ruined (at a cost to you and me of, you guessed it, £300million) - I thought he might appreciate this bit of Divine Comedy brilliance (sort of). The video is set, appropriately, in a nuthouse.



What's emerging here is the sheer scale of these crooked, Labourist, overpromoted socioeconomic demolition experts' blatant, abject, systematic, chronic corruption. You would be forgiven for receiving this information with a sense of total disbelief. Well, if you are tempted to do that, don't. It's all true, and, what's more, all we're really glimpsing now is the tip of a very big iceberg.

Ever wondered where all the money went? Well, now you have some idea.

Jail really is too good for them.

Troughers To The Bitter End

In tomorrow's Mail on Sunday and Sunday Times, two stories reveal just how venal former Labour ministers are. It simply beggars belief that these four, Geoff Hoon, Patricia Hewitt, Margaret Moron (sic) and Stephen Byers will almost certainly escape at the very least some form of criminal investigation for corruption.

One other thing is certain, unless the Tories get tough on this issue and threaten to seek prosecutions for what amounts to the worst sleaze probably in modern British history, we, the long-suffering public, will simply never know to what extent we have been comprehensively fleeced by the most corrupt and disastrous regime we've ever experienced in Britain.

Cameron, if and when he wins, had better be genuinely 'whiter than white' or I guarantee that this time around there will be bloody hell to pay. He needs to be concentrating on making sure any government he leads is unimpeachable by reviving the principles of collective and ministerial responsibility which have withered and died under Blair/Brown; that any future parliament is beyond reproach by making sure any pocket-lining MPs forfeit their office; and that the sins of the past, especially by these Labour criminals, are not simply forgotten, by resisting any pressure for an amnesty. I'm sure Gordon Brown would be pleased to return the favour given half the chance - but that's not the point.

This should be one of the major focuses of a new Cameron government, and definitely not woolly headed, watermelon carbon taxes that will severely damage the economy, justified on the basis of a now pretty thoroughly discredited scientific theory, itself a trojan horse for a socialist agenda.

Nothing less will do.

Blair's Millions

Excellent piece from the Renegade Economist today which traces some of Tony Blair's labyrinthine collection of funds, holding companies and legal entities that he's started since handing over his mandate to Gordon Brown. According to the Renegade, he's created a "complex web of structures involving 12 different legal entities handling the unprecedented millions he is receiving since he stepped down from office in 2007."

The article goes on:

So mystifying are the former prime minister’s financial structures – which involve highly specialised limited partnerships and parallel companies – that the Guardian today launches an open invitation to tax specialists and accountants to attempt to explain the motivation behind such structures. We have published the Companies House documents and other legal papers regarding the structure of the partnerships at guardian.co.uk and invite expert comment via our site at guardian.co.uk/politics/series/blair-mystery.

Thereis no suggestion Blair is doing anything illegal. But he refuses to explain the
purpose of the secretive partnerships.

Tax specialists say Blair could use these unusual arrangements at some point in the future to seek to transfer millions tax-free to his four children.
Blair denies, however, that the structures are such an inheritance tax avoidance scheme, known as a “family limited partnership”.

“Family limited partnerships” were being publicized to lawyers and accountants in November 2007 at the time Blair’s lawyers started to set up his structures.

Known in the trade as “Flips”, family limited partnerships are a way of getting round stricter inheritance tax rules in the 2006 budget, imposed by Gordon Brown while Blair was still prime minister.

'Flips', eh? Oh, the irony. Now, as yesterday evening's post on this blog shows, I'm not a little nervous about the Grauniad's journalistic standards, so I'm very pleased that an independent economics journal and blog has taken up the story. Indeed, the article then goes into far more detail than the Graun would ever dare about Blair's on-the-face-of-it legal but pretty irregular financial affairs, all designed (so the theory goes) to dodge inheritence tax, so little Leo will inherit all daddy's estimated, post-PM fortune of 14 million quid (and rising). "There, there. We won't let the beastly tax man have any of it." Perhaps Blair will be voting Tory in the next election (if he's actually registered to vote in the UK, that is).

Whichever way you choose to look at this, and the financial arrangements alone certainly seem worthy of the taxman's attention, it is worth remembering that Blair's pocket-lining at the expense of the British taxpayer, his early retirement (a breach of both a manifesto promise and of trust with 'the nation' - or 9 million suckers, rather- that gave New Labour under Blair, not Old Labour under Brown, a mandate to govern) and his subsequent ruthless exploitation of his ongoing popularity in the United States (if only they knew him as we do) are just the tip of the iceberg. They were (are?) all at it!

There can be no forgiveness for Blair for so many reasons, and he should be investigated for his dodgy businesses and questionable tax arrangements - just after he's been arrested over Iraq - but we must never forget that an awful lot more parliamentarians have been doing this under this Labour government for more than a decade and the worst, criminal offenders have been of the Labourist stripe. Now we know why. A management culture begins at the top. If the person at the top is a money-grubbing, ruthless exploiter of tax and expenses loopholes, the entire organisation's likely to follow suit. They're just copying the boss. Indeed, for the boss to feel OK about being so venal, he will positively (though quietly) encourage it. And that, folks, is called corruption.

And we've had 13 years of it. No wonder we're bankrupt: the country financially and parliament morally. Thank Brown for the former; Blair for the latter.

Mexican Stand-Off

SO the Labourists have decided to go after George "Ozzy" Osborne over his expenses claims. They've started by getting unknown constituency loyalist , Laurie Burton, to make a complaint to the standards authority, according to Sky.

The complaint to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner came from the chairman of the Labour Party in Mr Osborne's Tatton constituency, Laurie Burton.

In a letter to Mr Burton confirming that he will investigate the complaint, John Lyon said: "In essence, your complaint is that between 2001 and 2003 Mr Osborne wrongly identified his main home for the purposes of his claims against the Additional Costs Allowance, and that from 2003 Mr Osborne claimed for mortgage payments that were not necessarily incurred contrary to the rules of the house."

Mr Lyon said he would write to Mr Osborne and ask for his comments.

There could be one of any number of reasons for the suspicious timing of this complaint: revenge for the Tory's huge success with the "Brown is a liar" theme, with Mandelson (who's caused huge problems for Osborne before, lest we forget the Russian yacht incident of 2008) its chief schemer. Or it is the opening salvo of a tit-for-tat exchange which will escalate and could go nuclear, resulting in vast political casualties and further constitutional fallout.

There are other possibilities, for example that this is yet another cynical, desperate Labour ploy (the complaint will most likely not be upheld) to hijack a political news agenda increasingly dominated by further terrible recession data, a growing government funding crisis, the prospect of another bank failure and the dishonesty of Gordon Brown. It will fail because, first, of the suspicion that this is a weak complaint: why, for instance, wasn't it made sooner. Second, Labour are playing a seriously dangerous game by encouraging an ethical arms race, given the scale of their own misbehaviour. This will just look like hypocrisy (which is most-likely why they've hired a mouthpiece form outside parliament to do the dirty work. They really do think we are that stupid).

So, "flat-footed" and "desperate" are the words I would use to describe this latest move from the smearist wing of the Brownite-Mandelsonian tendency. Mexican stand-offs are usually fatal for all involved. I wonder whether someone in Labour has just pulled the trigger that ends-up, when the gunsmoke clears, with 500+ corpses of MPs' careers scattered around the village. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

In the meantime at the very least someone with some kind of vision and nerve in the Labour party should tell Brown once and for all: this kind of crap doesn't work any more.

Crooked Beard, Dodgy Bloke

Jim Knight is on Question Time tonight. Here's his BBC publicity shot. Beard looks a bit weird, doesn't it? This clown is the Labour MP for Dorset South and minister for something-or-other (employment) who's a serial trougher who said his exorbitant second home and expenses claims were 'reasonable'. This is how his own local rag, the Dorset Echo, reported it at the time:

Mr Knight claimed £12,541.69 in mortgage interest payments last year for a one-bedroom flat in Vauxhall that he has owned for more than two years. He also claimed £3,395 for food and £2,290.85 for maintenance as well as sums to cover telephone bills, cleaning services and utility and Council Tax payments. His total additional cost allowance claim came to just over £21,363 last year – the maximum allowance being £23,083. Mr Knight said he is in favour of a total overhaul of the way in which MPs’ salaries and expenses are set, adding that members should have no say at all in what they earn. He said: “It’s important to be transparent and I decided, pro-actively, to publish my expenses.

Maybe so, but this asshole's just said on Question Time that he doesn't think he should have to pay any of this cash back and that Cameron is an 'opportunist' for forcing his MPs to do it. He doesn't seem to be getting much sympathy from the audience, one of whom, rightly, said that until there are prosecutions, no restoration of trust is possible.

Crooked beard; dodgy bloke: why not start with Jim tosspot Knight?

Bercow Can't Add Up

Bercow seems to think that he is going to be the star of the All-New Reformed-Parliament Show. So far, though, he has not struck me as the sort of person who will do anything other than an absolutely terrible job. He's full of what is clearly Labour reform spin and he sounds, frankly, dishonest. Why? Well, he can't even take it on the chin that his own party didn't vote for him. The Tories knew he was being forced on them out of Brownite spite - and the sums speaks for themselves. His vote count equates almost perfectly with the number of people on the Labour benches, combined with a few lefty Lib Dems. Young's votes almost exactly correlate with the entire Tory body count, combined with a few dozen moderate Lib Dems, a very few decent Labourists and a smattering of Independents. (The rumour is that three (mad) Tories voted for him.)

Watch yesterday's interview with Boulton (although the Bradby one was far better - but it's a hassle to rip). This turncoat idiot thinks he's some kind of minister. And a Labour one, to boot. Well, make your own mind up.


Then we have today's Telegraph report that the 'reform' these MPs have opted for is nothing of the kind, (as I humbly predicted yesterday). The 'transparency' promised will not be forthcoming. They've covered all their bases and protected their piggy backsides once again. Are we surprised? I think not.

But one thing is clear to me, and should be clear to everyone else: this is all Brown's work. Parliament is rotten, sure. But if you want to know what (or rather who) represents the diseased heart of that rot, then this Bill should provide final, incontravertible evidence: it is Brown. As the Heff says, Bercow is Labour's last insult to voters. Sure, he's Labour's last insult, but this Bill is not Brown's last lie. There will be many more of those to come in what will be the last months of his pitiful premiership. He lies. Through his teeth. All the time. That's just "what he does" - ably aided and abetted by the likes of Balls, Harperson, Woodward, Mandelson - and now Bercow.

Guido Fawkes has examined the government's new Bill in some detail and has written about it in what I think is one of his best pieces yet. These are his conclusions:

[It] is a stitch up, we don’t need more rules and self-selected regulators, we need reform of the expenses system, together with clarity, transparency and enforcement of the rules. The voters will kick out MPs if they can identify crooks, in this sense in a democracy voters are the ultimate regulator of politicians. This whole idea is ill-founded, we don’t need to intermediate democracy with another quango or committee, this approach has already failed.

We need only to empower voters with enough information so that they can determine the truth about those who seek to represent them. The truth is all we need, not redactions, not more quangocrats.

Amen to that. And it's a message that needs to be shouted out loud every minute of every day from now until the dissolution. Someone in that disreputable House will eventually listen, surely.

One thing we do know for sure, though, is that that person won't be John Bercow.

All he does is speaks.

Fake Reformers, Fake Reform

So the first Bercow 'big reform' is to cast off the Speaker's wig. This is a laughable, disingenuous gesture designed somehow to provide a visual representation of that 'clean break' the Berk referred to in his cringe-making speech yesterday. But if you take the wig off the man, all you are left with is the man - and this man is part of the problem. Dan Hannan:

...the hairpiece isn't simply a mediaeval relic. It's a reminder to its wearer it that his office is bigger than he is. It was a bad start when Michael Martin arrogantly refused the headgear. "It's just not me," he insisted, presuming to take the job on his own terms - an attitude which prefigured his eventual disgrace. Had the old boy slapped on the horsehair, it might have inspired him to try to live up to the role, to be a bigger man.

Tee hee. But through this first, empty act, Bercow's immediately fallen into line and begun to do precisely the kind of thing that Brown-Labour wants: distracting, fake iconoclasm motivated not by any genuine principle or sincere wish to modernise - or 'reform' - constructively a parliament that has been rendered rotten only by its current members' systematic abuse of its time-honoured traditions, but by a simple, dishonest desire to stay put. And they will do anything and say anything they can to that one end. As Peter Oborne said in a TV interview today, Bercow is the manifestation of the corruption that has crippled parliament. He was forced to pay six grand of evaded capital gains tax and over a thousand pounds' worth of dodgy claims for a personal accountant.

How can this man, along with all the other MPs now tainted by serious and proven sleaze, be trusted to reform the system? The answer is he most certainly cannot. The problem is, that question is part of the distraction. The fundamental point is this: forget trust - we're well beyond that - MPs, including Bercow, no longer have the moral authority to change or create law. For Labour to think that it can install its placeman in the Speaker's chair and carry on regardless is a (further) deep insult to the electorate. It is a travesty and the so-called reforms that will be generated consequently will be no more than meaningless windowdressing and a waste of precious parliamentary time.

It has already begun. Harriet Harperson's first announcement on reform is to table legislation making it a criminal offence (a criminal expense?) for MPs to fiddle their fees or fail to declare their interests punishable by 'up to a year' in stir. Have you stopped laughing yet? Aside from the fact there's no mention of existing legislation that covers the small matter of tax evasion - or of false accounting - here we have in your proverbial nutshell the contradiction that will confront this bankrupt government and the parliament it helped to corrupt: legislation like this would not be necessary if honourable members were just that, honourable. That they deem this legislation necessary merely proves to the public that they consider themselves untrustworthy. "Well, if they can't trust themselves with public money, why the hell should we," the public will rightly think. (I do.)

They will go around in circles, new Speaker in the chair he does not merit. They will make laws to constrain a future generation of politician who might well need no such constraint, given the inevitably far higher level of public expectation and scrutiny that new generation will accept it will have to endure. What's clear is that this government and this parliament were incapable of obeying the letter and the spirit of the rules they themselves partly created. They were also incapable of exercising judgment in the realm of propriety, both individually and collectively. There is therefore no reason for them to expect people to swallow the notion that they themselves, in some sort of "reflexive lawmaking", should be permitted to make a new law that forces them to obey the rules. We say: no thanks, you no longer have the right. Besides, it will miss its target because such a law is always contingent upon what those rules actually are and those rules are made by, you guessed it, MPs. You see? Going around in circles.

The old system might be flawed, but flawed or not its basic operating premise, that MPs are honest and honourable, is essential if we are to have real democracy. It requires a degree of faith on all our parts to be successful. An honour code is the only way our elected representatives can exercise the power we give them to supervise the sovereignty of parliament, thereby ensuring the continued health of the body politic. And therein we find the root-cause of the problem: one dishonourable MP can cause enormous damage to parliament and to that health. Six hundred dishonourable MPs, including the Prime Minister, and you have a severe crisis. And the longer they stay in parliament, the graver the damage they do, by the very fact of their continued presence. But it should be unsurprising to us that these people are reluctant to leave, regardless of this damage. They are who they are, after all: they don't care.

Bercow, with his fake iconoclasm, is merely another sign of that 'graver damage' to which I refer. This man is an insult to our intelligence, with or without a wig. He's the latest symptom of a decayed, diseased legislature. The chief carriers of the disease are Gord'elpus Brown and his gang of amoral Labourists. (Tory sleaze has become a mere secondary infection, incredibly.)

The cure? It's a purgative and it always works: a general election.

The Old Bill Goes In

Rozzers: some last minute truncheon practice before the raid

So Scotland Yard has decided to investigate four MPs and a Peer for their mortgage frauds. About time!

Suspects on their list include phantom mortgage claimants Chaytor and Morley according to the Speccy. Marvellous.

Somehow, though, I have a feeling that these abusers of public office and breakers of the law will get away with it. And if that happens, given that this pair, along with fellow Labourist fraudsters Hope and Moran, are the worst of the worst, then there will be no convictions at all of any of the hundreds of MPs who've been fiddling the system (by avoiding capital gains tax, for instance).

We shall see.

Pay Back

The Parliament website has published another list, according to The Times, this time of MPs who've felt the need to unburden themselves of our money. You can see it here. It's a surprisingly long list, given that we're talking about MPs.

There are some interesting entries (which we know about) from the titchy: Cheryl Gillan, Shadow Minister for Dogfood's return of £4.47 (presumably in Pedigree Chum coupons) right up to the really huge: King Labour Pig, Minister for [the] Health [of his bank balance], Phil Hope's monster hit of 42674.13 pound's worth of freshly laundered bills.

The total amount of troughed taxpayer cash regurgitated by the little piggies is £478,616.90.

Given that the amount pocketed, assuming a minimum of £80,000-worth of expenses per MP over 4 years, is around £52 million - but is surely much higher if take into account profits from the sale of flipped dwellings - this is simply not good enough as far as I'm concerned.

Individual MPs must ALL explain themselves to their constituents and be forced to stand for their seats in a by election.

There is, of course, a tried and tested mechanism for this already. It's called a GENERAL ELECTION.

Then we'd see some genuine "pay back".

Bye Bye Elections

Even in defeat, Michael Martin yesterday could not bring himself to show one iota of contrition for his attempts - using our money - to block publication of MPs' expenses last year. Instead he chose to mark the occasion of his long-overdue passing by launching a pretty scathing attack not on his own party, (to which he has always, outrageously, remained tribally loyal like a good little corrupt Scots Labour, trade unionist good ol' boy should), but on all three party leaders for 'not supporting him'. Well, the Guardian today firmly gives the lie to that claim and points the finger of blame squarely at the Labour benches, front and back, for the failure of MPs to reform the way they pay themselves.

Martin, effectively the first Speaker to be ejected from office for nearly 300 years, rounded on MPs, describing their response to his own package of reforms as "deeply disappointing".

He said: "I wish with all my heart that that package of recommendations had won the confidence of the House [of Commons] last July. And I wish that party leaders had shown then some of the leadership they have shown now".

He accepted that such votes on MPs' pay are traditionally not whipped, but pointedly said: "This does not remove the responsibility of leaders to speak up for common sense and for the obvious wishes of the country in seeking necessary reform."

He reminded MPs : "Half of all Members did not attend to vote, and more than half of those who did vote rejected the proposals. I regretted that then: I deeply regret it now, and I expect that many Members of the House now share that regret."

In reality, David Cameron did whip his shadow cabinet to support the package, and much of the resistance was organised by Labour backbenchers.

Brown himself did not vote, some cabinet members including Jacqui Smith and Andy Burnham rejected the package, and 30 ministers voted for the status quo.

We all know why, too, don't we. That's thirty ministers on the gravy train, house-flipping and tax evading their way to becoming millionaires. It is true that the Tories and the Lib Dems have been guilty of abusing the expenses system, but their sleaze pails by comparison to the systematic fraudulence of many Labourists, especially ministers. And all Martin could do is continue to try to fudge the issue and blur the truth with his self-regarding, petty, crooked little speech. No wonder Brown looked like he didn't give two hoots what the Speaker was saying. He'd probably authorised the final version.

("The Scottish Connection" is the big, as-yet unwritten story of this catastrophic government's disastrous effect on so many aspects of British society. For instance: the Union, the banking system, the economy, the Civil Service, the House of Lords, justice, liberty, the armed forces and now Parliament itself. All have been poisoned and laid low by the most venal and incompetent government in UK history, a government, it must now be acknowledged, that was from the very start utterly dominated by corrupt Scottish Labour members with Brown always at the centre of the chaos they have generated everywhere.)

Meanwhile, the fallout is beginning to land in the real world. After Kitty Ussher's resignation yesterday for stealing £17,000 from us, calls from Vince Cable for a by election in her Burnley constituency will surely gain momentum. As the Grauniad goes on to say, another Labour crook, Jim Divine...

...the fifth Labour MP to be forced to stand down over his expenses claims, indicated he may force an early byelection after he was told by the party's disciplinary panel that his expenses claims disqualified him from standing for Labour again.

It seems from the direction this scandal now appears to be taking this summer could be remembered as the Summer of Elections. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Cameron should take control of the situation, show some real steel, argue that since Brown has decided to abandon democracy in Britain altogether, he will order all his MPs to resign their seats and fight by elections, facing their constituents and standing on their records.

Such an unprecedented move, given Labour's utter corruptness and paralysis, would, probably, force the autumn general election we all now want. Even if it didn't, it would be the right thing to do and would defnitively demonstrate Cameron's ability to lead us out of this, the darkest of the dark periods in the history of our country. It would also reveal once and for all and beyond any shadow of a doubt that the man responsible for this darkness, James Gordon Brown, is totally unfit for the office that he stole.

Ussher-ed Out

Kitty Ussher: spending more time with her alien

I'm quitting for the sake of my kids, says tax evader and [ex-]government treasury minister, posh southern socialist MP for Burnley, Kitty Ussher. According to the Telegraph, she claims she has never done anything wrong whatsoever and that she had always intended to quit. Er, right. So that's why you accepted the ministerial appointment 12 days ago is it Kitty cat? Pull the other one, it's got a fur ball on it.

Her remarks to The Lancashire Telegraph just two months ago bear repetition if you don't think I'm being fair.

BURNLEY MP Kitty Ussher has defended her decision to school her children in London and said “I am still in love with Burnley”.

The MP said she has been shocked by the reaction since the news was exclusively revealed by the Lancashire Telegraph last week.

She said that “nothing has changed in practical terms” and that she would continue to split her time between her home in Brixton, South London, and her constituency base in Burnley.

And she said that her working life means she had no choice but to send her children to school in London, even though “the education in Burnley is better”.

Mrs Ussher, who serves as a Pensions Minister, said she would now name her terraced home in Brixton as her principal address.

But she said that weekends and school holidays would be spent at her home in the Healeywood area of Burnley.

Mrs Ussher, who was elected in 2005, said: “Parliament sits from Monday to Thursday in terms practically identical to school terms.

“If I want to keep us together I have no choice but to send them to school near Westminster even though the education in Burnley is better.

“I am 100 per cent committed to my adopted home of Burnley and I’m very proud that my children have Burnley on their birth certificates.

“But anyone who suggests that I should split my family up for the sake of my job should be scorned and derided.”

Mrs Ussher said she was keen to remain as the town’s MP.

Fancy that.

==Update==
Just to clarify: The Guardian is now saying she was actually sacked as a minister. Her claim that she decided months ago not to stand again as an MP is what I was attacking, mainly because it's not true!

Malik: One Million Percent Guilty!

The Telegraph seems to be as angry as the rest of us at Labour's offensive attempt first to cover-up the report into scamster MP Shahid Malik's irregular housing arrangements and then to shoe-horn him back into a ministerial position with indecent haste (at least arch sleaze-merchant Hain had served a bit of time out of the cabinet before he was brought back, laughably). They've gone after him again - and this time it's very hard to see how he can survive in the House of Commons, let alone as a minister of the Crown. The story goes...

The Communities Minister claimed the maximum second home allowance for his London property while the office on the ground floor of his constituency house was funded through a separate parliamentary “office” expenses system.

The Daily Telegraph disclosed on Wednesday that Mr Malik had claimed more than £6,500 for a property described only as “office 2” on his parliamentary claim forms.

The minister had declined to tell this newspaper the location of the taxpayer-funded “office 2”. However, it can now be disclosed that “office 2” was the ground floor of his constituency home in Dewsbury.

Mr Malik said he needed the extra office space because the constituency office he inherited was not big enough.

However his expenses files show that he moved out of the original office into a new office in April 2006 but that he continued to submit claims for “office 2” until at least April 2008.

Mr Malik insisted last night that he paid rent separately for the “living area” of his constituency home.

However, no formal rental agreement exists for the “living area” and Mr Malik would not disclose how much rent he paid.

Both the constituency office and his constituency house were owned by controversial landlord, Tahir “Terry” Zaman, a friend of Mr Malik. Mr Malik stepped down as justice minister last month after The Daily Telegraph reported his landlord’s claim that he was paying well below the market rate for the rent of his home in his Dewsbury constituency.

Pretty much banged to rights, then. But there is a lot more to this story than this guy's double-, dodgy- and over- claiming on expenses. What about Gordon Brown? Why did he bring this toxic man back into his cabinet so soon - before the report into his activities had even been digested? It's difficult to say, but I would hazard that the answer is something along the lines of 'sheer, bloody-minded, stubborn contrariness'. That's what motivates Brown's decisions most of the time. Not common sense, certainly not facts and never - and I mean never - the voters' will.

Well, not only has Malik been caught red-handed for his venality - twice - but this time Brown's also been caught-out. He's been caught with his pants right down on this occasion for his poor judgement, for his inability to strike the right moral tone (unlike David Cameron) and for his total lack of credibility on this issue (or any other for that matter). How can he be the 'right man' to 'clean up Parliament'? The answer is, of course, what it has always been: he isn't and never was. There is such a huge gulf between what he says and what he does, the public can only conclude that he is either utterly incompetent or ruthlessly dishonest. Either way, he cannot be trusted. As the Telegraph reports:

The disclosure threatens to undermine the Prime Minister who only returned Mr Malik to government earlier this week after receiving assurances that his financial affairs were in order.

It now appears that Downing Street failed to scrutinise Mr Malik’s expense claims thoroughly before allowing him to hold ministerial office again...Mr Brown reappointed him as a minister on Tuesday, saying that an investigation by Sir Philip Mawer, the Prime Minister’s adviser on ministerial rules, had cleared Mr Malik of any failure to comply with the Ministerial code.

On Tuesday, the Prime Minister refused to publish Sir Philip’s report.

On Wednesday, after calls for publication from figures including Sir Christopher Kelly of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, Mr Brown backed down and promised to publish an edited summary of the document.

He ignores advice and makes ill-informed, incorrect decisions based on his own stubborn prejudices and then blames everyone else, the 'system' and/or America for the chaos that he subsequently causes. That's Brown.

Only a day after reappointing Mr Malik to the Government and clearing him of breaking ministerial rules, Downing Street failed to endorse the minister’s actions.

Speaking to journalists at Westminster, Mr Brown’s official spokesman made clear that it was up to Mr Malik to explain his use of public money.

The spokesman said: “If you have any particular accusation that you’d like to make towards Shahid Malik you should make them and you should give him an opportunity to respond to them.”

Hang on, didn't you know whether the guy was clean before you re-employed him Mr Downing Street mouthpiece? So you see, the 'subsequent chaos' about to erupt in this case is that Brown is going to have to fire a minister he re-hired about 48 hours before, with the deluge of embarrassment for the government and for Labour generally that will come with it. It is so utterly amateurish it's difficult to know which part to ridicule first. Even I, a dyed in the wool loather of Brown, wouldn't have thought he was capable of screwing-up again so rapidly and so completely after the spineless thickies on the Labour back benches had given him his lifeline. I bet those ministers who backed him are wondering what possessed them. How could they imagine this disaster of a leader could change?

There might be a couple of ministers still in Brown's court: the two Balls...erm...Mandelson(?) and, of course, the rehabilitated sleaze king himself, Peter Hain. The rest? Much more of this kind of publicity and they'll be queuing up to stab him in the back run away. And Brown? Ah, Brown. Back to the bunker for you then, mein fuhrer. You'll be safe there. For a while.

Betrayal

The Telegraph has revealed the latest government minister to have lined his pockets at the taxpayer's expense. He is Bob Ainsworth, the Armed Forces minister. He "claimed nearly £6,000 for the redecoration of his designated second home, submitting bills that included rebuilding the fireplace and fitting oak beams into his ceiling," the Telegraph says.

...[he] also tried to claim £2,225 for a sofa and £1,000 for a LCD Samsung television, both of which were reduced by the fees office. According to the Green Book of parliamentary rules, MPs are not allowed to claim “the capital cost of repairs which go beyond making good dilapidations and enhance the property”.

And so it goes on - and on and on and on. I suppose it's worth noting this man is also a serial flipper who, as has become the norm, denies he's done anything wrong.

So why bother bringing it up, then? Well, this case is a lot different in my opinion. While this man was busy doing-up his house with oak beams and artex or whatever it was - paid for by us - the troops in the field for whom his department has a duty of care are badly-paid, ill-equipped, over-stretched and under-fire. They are fighting and dying in Afghanistan while he is troughing away merrily, beautifying his house so he can sell it on, turning a profit and rubbing his hands. While the lions of Britain and their families are forced to live in damp, cheap, dilapidated accommodation on ancient bases, one (probably all) of their ministers of state has been filling his bank account by playing a property game that tax* on the fighting soldiers' income has helped finance. (*It's worth remembering American soldiers do not pay income tax while on active duty, unlike their British counterparts.)

This isn't merely a disgusting insult to the armed forces Ainsworth represents, it's a betrayal. It reveals the most serious breakdown in basic morality at the heart of the British government. You would need to go back to the days of the Napoleonic Wars and the mutinies in Spithead and Nore in 1797 to find some sort of historical comparison for this kind of corruption, at least in terms of the yawning moral gulf that has opened between rulers, ruled and the guardians of the land. The rulers are filling their chests with the nation's treasure while the people and the armed forces are expected to make do and do as they're told. Naturally, 212 years on, there are differences. But the underlying symptoms indicative of the decadence of the powerful in this country are the same.

So if this Ainsworth character is not removed from his post immediately, our forces in combat would be perfectly within their rights to stop fighting as far as I'm concerned. They should go all the way and consider their service abused, the military covenant broken and refuse to fight until this parliament is dissolved and a new parliament elected. Of course, they will continue fighting because they know what's at stake. Besides, their loyalty is to the country, to the Queen and to each other, not to Bob 'Oak Beams' Ainsworth or Gordon 'D-Day Invite' Brown.

Gordon doesn't 'do' loyalty and neither does his dead, chaotic regime.

Darling Doomed!

Yes, Darling broke the rules by claiming for two homes. He's doomed! As Tory Bear says, bring on the Balls...

This is going to be fun.

Cashing-In

The Telegraph has launched a fresh attack on yet another Tory MP in the ongoing expenses saga. Right, well, let's just get the details out of the way: Bill Cash, best known for his strong anti-federalist stance on the EU, claimed 15 large for his daughter's flat in London "even though he owned another home near Westminster" in 2005. He named her flat as his second home, although on the 10 o'clock news tonight he explained that not only was this within the rules at the time, he wasn't actually living in the 'other home' in London at the time. He also agreed to repay the money.

OK. He's a trougher who's used taxpayer's hard-earned to take care of his offspring and as such is obviously the epitome of all that is evil in this world of ours. But I'm going to go slightly off message here and pose a couple of questions. First, why has the Telegraph's ongoing coverage of this story focused its biggest headlines on Tory MPs? Are we to believe that Labour, with Blears and Morley and Chaytor and Malik and so on and so on ad infinitum, are somehow immune to the most damning of front page splashes apparently fine for Tories who haven't actually, technically broken any rules? Why are Labour MPs, quite a few of whom have stretched the rules in some cases beyond breaking point in making huge capital gains over the past eight years by doing-up their 'second' homes at taxpayers expense, then flipping it and doing the same thing to what was their main home, and then flipping back and selling the - bear with me - first second home, (now a second home again), at a huge profit (take a breath) not being subjected to the same kind of forensic scrutiny and opprobrium as the Tories? The house-flipping is a scam and Geoff Hoon, to name but one, has made millions out of it. Why isn't he being hounded out of office like Kirkbride or, one assumes in due course, Bill Cash. The question is: does the Sleazygraph have an anti-Tory agenda? Well, who knows. The evidence kind of suggests it might, even if it's only a 'mild' one.

But it remains a bit of a mystery to me, especially when you compare their other revelation inside Friday's paper about Nigel Griffiths, the Labour MP and another member of Brown's untouchable inner circle (you remember, he's the married Edinburgh trougher who was snapped shagging some other woman in his office on Remembrance Sunday and then lied about it). This guy is a real scumbag and, you'd be forgiven for thinking, a walking front page - yet he only bags second or even third spot. Curious.

The second possibility is that Cameron, unlike Brown, is now quite comfortable seeing the old guard fall before the next election and thus isn't making much of a fuss about what might or might not be press bias. Bill Cash would be no great loss for Dave. Winterton wasn't, or Steed or Hogg or Fraser and so on and so forth. But I'm not so sure about this after the Kirkbride case, where the rabid left of the 'Respect' party played a strong part in unseating her. Cameron didn't lift a finger to support her, which could mean that actually he has no control over the course events are taking. In which case, he and the Tories are now at the mercy of the press - and, frankly, the far left.

There's another problem for Cameron, too. The reason Labour are stalling on deselection and the disciplining of its most corrupt Members of Parliament is because of the respective selection systems. Tory MPs are much more vulnerable to deselection than Labour not because they deserve it any more than Labour MPs - they clearly do not - but because the Labour system for deselection/selection is far more corrupt (as we saw with the Georgia Gould fiasco recently) than the Tory system. Labour really thinks they can get away with it - and here's a thought: maybe they can! So the only place left for us to go and where these thieves might, just might, be held accountable for their criminality is the General Election. I just pray people won't get fooled into actually rewarding them by stupidly punishing the Tories. There's an even bigger picture than the expenses scandal, and that's the disaster that is Labour-in-office. They have to be kicked-out at all costs, not least because they deserve to be.

So Bill Cash, old chap, you'd better watch your back mate. And do not expect your daughter to be standing again as a Conservative candidate any time soon. Your boss has opted for an attrition strategy - probably because he had no choice. The Tory casualties will be very heavy before the General Election as a consequence.

But we have to make bloody sure Labour's are much worse after it.

Labour Tax Dodgers Let Off Hook

Just been watching Sky News in disbelief. Downing Street has come out and defended tax dodging ministers, even after the Inland Revenue itself in an unprecedented statement said:

"It’s a general principle of tax law that accountancy fees incurred in connection with the completion of a personal tax return are not deductible. This is because the costs of complying with the law are not an allowable expense against tax. This rule applies across the board."

Instead we get the now-familiar whitewash tactics of Labour: a meeting of party 'officials' (laughably named the 'star chamber') followed by a statement saying something along the lines of "Well, shucks folks, the system is just plain stoopid. But our good 'ol boys - heck, they did nothing wrong - they're the real victims in all this. Would they do anything to hurt you? Now would they? So calm down, shut-up, go home and get ready to vote us in for a Fourth Term. When we decide to let you, that is."

Grrr. The lefty goons seem to think paying an unqualified accountant, and husband of one of your colleagues, taxpayers money to do your personal accounts is just fine and tickedy-boo. But you see, Labour, no it isn't. It's illegal whatever your stupid little green book (that you wrote) says. We have to comply - and so do you!

Compare this with Cameron's ongoing purge of Tory party corruption and you see how utterly feeble this is. Mind you, I suppose it is naive of us to expect the totally corrupt Labour party to investigate their own members and produce any other results. Unbelievable. They are that bad.

Wipe them out in the elections next month, folks. Bring them down. But just remember, that will not be achieved by voting for fringe parties like UKIP.

However distasteful the idea of voting Tory might seem to you just now, it's the only way to give the Labour troughers, fraudsters and total incompetents exactly what they deserve: a bloody good kicking.

The Twilight Zone: Heffer vs Piggy

Sir Alan "Posh Piggy" Haselhurst

Simon Heffer, the Telegraph's pompous voice of the old right and scourge of all things Cameron, all things Left, has now threatened to stand against grandee Tory piggy and front runner for the Speaker's vacant seat, Sir Alan Haselhurst, if the latter fails to pay back £12,ooo-worth of gardening expenses.

This new twist might not have been quite what Dave Cameron had in mind when he threw open the Tory PP candidates list to all-comers: "The Heif" has about as much time for Call-Me-Dave as a cow has for roast beef.

Of posh porker Haselhurst, Heffer said:

“If he does not, between now and the opening of nominations for the general election, admit error, apologise, pay back the £12,000 and promise to behave, I shall stand against him as an independent. If Sir Alan thinks I am joking, I warn him I am not. I have backers and volunteers. I say this more in anger than in sorrow: we are all angry. Doesn’t he get it?”

Haselhurst might not 'get it' but you can bet your most violet wisteria that Cameron does. That money will be paid back instantly - with interest - or Haselhurst will be out before you can say 'large, female cow'.

But this is weird sort of old Tory, country gent, farmyard politics that doesn't really compute for most folk, including me. We're into real Twilight Zone stuff now and as more Z-list celebs and self-important numbskulls put their names forward as independent, 'anti-sleaze' candidates ala total windbad, Martin Bell in 1997 things can only get worse. Esther Rantzen? Robert Harris? David Van Day? David Van Day FFS!! I guess he's standing on the 70s Shitpop Revival ticket. You know, "A Vote For Van Day Is A Vote For Dollar!".

Could get confusing.

Simon Heffer Heifer pictured in 2005 interviewing Ann Widdecombe in the grounds of his country estate

Dying Out

Diplodocus Brown: Extinct

Long has it been known that the Daily Telegraph 'editor-in-chief', relative youngster and Brown sympathiser, Will Lewis' sop to the Left was Mary Riddell. The 'Labour insider' was employed soon after Lewis was installed by the Telegraph's new owners. Since then she (and he) have left regular readers, of whom yours truly once was, apoplectic with fury as inch after inch of Leftist, Brownite horse manure was dumped on them week after week, earning Riddell the richly deserved sobriquet Merry Drivell, at least from me.

You could be fooled into imagining that after Brown's monumental cockups over the economy, the smears campaigns and now the expenses scandal - and just about everything else he's ever touched - that we'd be spared any more of this crap from the Lewis-Drivell axis. Sadly, no. Like Toynbee and Ashley - only moreso even than these two uber-loons - Riddell just keeps on churning out the same old sympathetic, sycophantic, half-baked, often barely readable claptrap about 'what Brown must do next'. There's another dose of dozy Drivell today. Check out some of the diseased sputum she's managed to cough-up this time. It's not her worst effort, but there are some dollops of trademark Merry in it worth repeating:

Mr Miliband's modest wishlist – more power for select committees, Prime Minister's Questions (an ordeal that Mr Brown detests) becoming nicer, and an end to ceremonial garb – will appeal to reformers

Diddums. And Ed Milliband's 'reform programme'? Laugh? I nearly cried. Surely he's too worried about how global warming will affect his wank pimples to be concerned with this.

However he reshuffles his pack, Mr Brown should ignore those urging caution on broader reform. Delivering cleaned-up rules is the easy bit. Promising the changes that will jolt Britain into the 21st century [sic] is his only chance of wrong-footing Mr Cameron.

*wipes eyes* Oh. Dear. I suppose all you can say about this is that Brown ignores everyone else, including an electorate that not only wants him out now, but to see him hanging from the nearest lampost with piano wire - attached to his tongue (metaphorically, of course - I think). So if he ignores the 'more cautious' piggy pocketliners in his shit-awful party, at least he's being consistent. Consistently terrible, that is.

And "jolt Britain into...blah blah...21st Century...wheeze...wrong-footing Cameron...splutter". For God's sake, Brown's a dinosaur, Drivell! He's the thing that most urgently requires abolition, Ridell, to allow Britain to enter the 21st Century.

He's a political Diplodocus: he plods along making lots of loud honking and farting noises but doesn't really-actually do anything except strip the land of vegetation (taxes) and produce about a ton of arse-methane a day (talking). The chances of him 'wrong-footing' the scurrying, warm-blooded, hirsute creature that is Cameron is about the same as it was for those peabrained, doomed megabeasts of yesteryear: the former changed with the climate and inherited the earth while the latter drifted off into extinction, poisoned by its own pollution.

Political paleantologists might be interested in the fossilised remains of Brown's career years from now. But today, the asteroid that is the expenses scandal might be bad news for the Tory rodents, but for Brown and Labour's other terrible lizards it's an Extinction Level Event.

And Mary, no amount of your drivel is going to change that. Fate is fate and Brown's is to go the way of the Dodo. They have a lot in common not least in that regard.

Lies, Darling, Lies

Alistair Darling, charged with managing the nation's finances, has lied about his expenses claims according to the latest DT revelations.

Mr Darling initially attempted to claim yesterday that the expense was justified as it was in relation to the taxation of his office costs. However, receipts submitted by the Chancellor to the parliamentary authorities clearly show the advice is for personal taxation.

According to senior accountants, in itself this is a clear breach of the rules. What makes it worse is that Darling sought to mislead the public initially by suggesting his claims were related purely to his role as an MP and as Chancellor.

Surely there is only one course open to him now: he must resign. He's claimed public money for a private accountant, has lied to the public about it and as the man in charge of tax policy, has exposed himself to a serious conflict of interest. Each one of those reasons represents a strong enough reason for the man to be sacked. Taken together, not only should he be fired as Chancellor, but his future as an MP must also now be in serious doubt.

If useless Brown doesn't act on this, everyone will finally know precisely where they stand with Labour: they will stop at nothing to cling on to power. Not good enough, I'm afraid - and the Opposition parties must make damn sure that message is heard loud and clear by demanding a no confidence debate in the Chancellor and, by implication, the government.

This cannot go on.