Pigs to Westminster, Home of the Pork
The news that today pig farmers are marching on Westminster presents a number of obvious punning targets along the lines of "coals to Newcastle". There is certainly a lot of pork already in Westminster with £87 million of MPs expenses, plus subsidised dining and boozing all at the public's expense.
Not forgetting the no-receipts-required culture. We even have learnt in the last few days that the Speaker has authorised the shredding of past expense claim records. Just as the Stasi shredded the evidence of their guilt as the Berlin Wall came down. Oink! Oink!
The unpopular parts of the blogosphere are complaining about Guido's comparison of the monies received by Tom Watson's family and the amount received by Derek Conway's family. None of them dispute that the Watsons suck on the teat of the taxpayer to a far greater extent than the Conways ever did. Not one has disputed the £300,000+ figure, they just weakly claim that the Watson family do more work.
Well Guido has some news coming folks... this is as they say "a developing story". Guido has a track-record of leading on sleaze stories ahead of the dead-tree-press, ask Peter Hain.
Not forgetting the no-receipts-required culture. We even have learnt in the last few days that the Speaker has authorised the shredding of past expense claim records. Just as the Stasi shredded the evidence of their guilt as the Berlin Wall came down. Oink! Oink!
The unpopular parts of the blogosphere are complaining about Guido's comparison of the monies received by Tom Watson's family and the amount received by Derek Conway's family. None of them dispute that the Watsons suck on the teat of the taxpayer to a far greater extent than the Conways ever did. Not one has disputed the £300,000+ figure, they just weakly claim that the Watson family do more work.Well Guido has some news coming folks... this is as they say "a developing story". Guido has a track-record of leading on sleaze stories ahead of the dead-tree-press, ask Peter Hain.
61 comments:
keep going guido........there can be no excuses-no cover-ups.our politicians think they are above the law and above the people.well they are not......if they are all found to be defrauding US then they must ALL go........
there are 60million of us so i am sure we could find some honest citizens.
bofl
The point about the Watsons is not that they have done something illegal or outside the rules - as far as I know they have not. The point is that they are spongers who live off the creativity of the private sector (and yet campaign against that very sector). They are a family of Ellsworth Tooheys - andif you don't know who Elllsworth is, then you should,
Well let's hope that some of the greedy little porkers inside the House don't get mixed up in the (flock, herd?) of pigs outside and led off to the abattoir...
Watson banger or a rasher of Conway, anyone?
The difference between the two cases is not particularly subtle. What Conway did was dishonest. What Watson and his extended family are doing is not dishonest. If you have evidence to the contrary then let's see if, but if all you have is innuendo then it's all a bit pathetic.
Do you have hard evidence against Conway? It is a lack of evidence of work in his case.
No receipts required?!
I LOL'd when I read that.
What a joke, but at least with the Internet we can all see what these spivs are up to.
So many of these MP's are nothing other than grubby little wide boys
From the BBC... The cross party Early Day Motion supporting the British pig industry was from one Richard Bacon... :-)
Let me guess, Watson has suddenly remembered an urgent and immediate factfinding mission to Chile until the summer recess, or at least until that Michael Martin boll-weevil gives him the all-clear.
Please tell me this is the beginning of the end, as although it is entertainment of sorts for us sans culottes, rather like magnums of Cristal it an expensive samusement.
There's other snouts to be checked for too much snuffling, are there not?
Exactly how much work did Peter Hain's 80 year old mother do for her £5000+ per year salary? Is she still receiving it? Nothing against the lady - but the rest of us taxpayers sub our elderly parents out of our OWN pockets.
Then there's James Purnell's conveniently movable London property. When it comes to claiming huge dollops of taxpayers' cash in the Additional Costs Allowance, it is his "second home". When it comes to selling the same property he claims it is his "main home" - to the Inland Revenue - in order to avoid capital gains tax.
Apparently none of this is "dishonest" - it's all "in the rules". Gosh, who writes those rules I wonder............
Martin Salter was one of the MPs who claimed between 1997 and 2001 (when rent or mortgage agreements were required to be supplied for the first time) £1000 a month for a London porperty he did not have. I saw him fill the forms in. Another was Michael Trend, Windsor, who was found out and deselected for his trouble and stood down. there will be some others, with constituencies outside London but not far away..
we've got to a point now where people do not need evidence to believe that the houses of parliament are the houses of corruption.
this is a situation created by the mps themselves (shredding receipts!! wtf!!)
what amazes me is that none of them are doing anything to show they are clean
the nepotism that guido's story reveals is amazing. does anyone really believe that these watsons are employed because they were the best candidates for the job?
one of the most amusing defences of the employment of family members by politicians is the confidentiality they bring. sounds like sothern italy / omerta / camorra etc
Why has this article disappeared from the Daily Express?
HOW A LABOUR MP AND HIS FAMLY ARE RAKING IN £300000 FROM TAXPAYER
It was there yesterday.
I'm a bit late, but I've just twigged as to why Toilets is so amusing when he interviews Brown.
His look of embarassed amusement gives it away - he is actually pleased as punch to be in the presence of "greatness". Gosh, sitting next to an historical figure - what fun...
Don't these fools realise that they have devalued politics and that most people would rather have their teeth pulled than sit next to a weirdo like McBean?
[i]They are a family of Ellsworth Tooheys - andif you don't know who Elllsworth is, then you should[/i]
Why? Aynn Rand is a bloody bore.
P.S. You are Atlas Shrugged and I claim my free five pounds.
how come subsidised dining is not a benefit in kind?
dan said...so its alright then to keep it in the family! To deny equal opportunities to us all!
I find your acceptance of such vile practices quite astounding. When the average wage is less than �16K per annum you think these people are worth so much more?
Of course they are not. They are incompetents, they deny free speech, they deny the people a say on the corrupt EU WHY? to protect their bulging wallets and two/three/ Four? homes ALL paid for off OUR backs.
You Labour Party apologists should be utterly ashamed of yourselves. Keir Hardy must be turning in his grave.
@ Dan
"What Watson and his extended family are doing is not dishonest."
Really? How do you know this? Is the exact detail of their recruitment to publicly funded positions documented somewhere for public scrutiny?
What remarkably charming naivety.
You should wait until it has developed then.
Go get 'em Guido, king of the blogs.
What about the Electoral Commission? As long as the EC are able to preside as judge and jury, these pigs will evade the law which applies to everyone else.
Talking of snouts, troughs and porkies, whilst it appears to be within the Inland Revenue and HOC rules to declare your primary residence as your secondary residence and vice versa to suit, is it possible that this contravenes the Fraud Act 2006?
"Fraud by false representation" is defined by Section 2 of the Act as a case where a person makes "any representation as to fact or law ... express or implied" which they know to be untrue or misleading.
Conway clearly did wrong.
Watson, twat that he is, has not yet demonstrably done anything wrong....
And for those people go harking on about "this nepotism/family-hiring wouldn't happen in the private sector" balls, have you people ever even had a fucking job? And do you read the papers, pay attention to life?
Because anyone can see it happens all the time everywhere, thats how many sectors do their hiring - especially TV, journalism, the upper echelons of most private companies' management, most fashion, the arts, most small businesses (how many people working hard in a small company have found that the boss' neice etc comes in and is promoted beyond their ability?) etc etc etc
Talking of the MSM and its high moral tone. As the great humanitarian and penal reformer, Conrad, Lord Black of the Trannygraph begins his academic research in a Florida nick, a large swathe of the UK press - mouthy turds like Heffer and Field Marshal Hastings; hacks like Daley, Marrin, Moore, Evans and the nutter Steyn should congratulate themselves on their investigative, journalistic prowess, so sharp, so vigilant, so investigative that they all worked for a serious international criminal for years and never suspected a thing.
Politicians all across the world, too, la Thatch and that fucking unspeakable cunt Kissinger, they deserve a pat on the back for their moral judgement, their perspicacity. Funny how all these upright, moralising, cheap cocksuckers can find acres of space, hours of parliamentary time to damn and hound a single parent’s benefit fraud and yet were queuing, shuffling along on their knees before this delusional, facetious bullyboy.
Next time Heffer the prick is huffing and puffing about the awful immorality of the poor, next time revolting bully Hastings, like Black a pretend historian, a pretend journalist, is shouting the odds about personal responsibility maybe one of DimblebyCorp might ask them why it was that they, for all their proximity and acuity, could not, like Joe Public, detect that their employer, pussy-whipped, vain and obnoxious, was spending far more than he was earning and that maybe, just maybe, he was nicking it off other people. If they can’t, in short, spot a thief in their midst what the fuck use are they, gossiping and bitching, lobbying and whispering. C’mon Heffer, you fat, sermonising freak. Tell us how you were always uneasy about Black
The chuckling Boy-Man, Hague, it was, who ennobled this bombastic horrorshow, Black; John Currie-Major wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole. Perhaps the Shadow Foreign Secretary and Ffffffffion and Lord Seb may get down Florida way and pop in, bung Conrad a few dollars, keep him quiet, be nice to reverse the process.
Misled by Campbell, Blair and Scarlett; misled by nasty donors, misled by thieving Black and his jaundiced harpy, Amiel; acting in good faith at all times, never doing anything wrong; gosh, in the media-political nexus such friends we have; tarts and slags and pimps and nonces, thieves and bullies; cheats and extortionists, war criminals and murderers, what a fucking shower.
In any event, given the ensuing dictatorship of PresbyterianLabour, Black was spending in the wrong end of the brothel; if only he had bought his respectability from Michael Kneepads White, Toilets Maguire and Polly Mascara; his protection from Nancy Brown and Miranda Blair instead of Thatcher, ChuckleBoyHague and the reprobate Kissinger, His Lordship would probably still have been here, fawned on by those who lecture, harangue, barrack, bully and extort from the rest of us. Shielded by learned jurists like wotsisname, that sour old Ulsterman , Hutton, that’s it, their Lordships would have been happy to support their noble gang mate. Lessons would be learned, no-one would be prosecuted.
Shitting all over the bold Field Marshal Hastings, Black ran the op-ed pages of the Trannygraph as though it was his personal toilet wall - embarrassing, old man fetishism about his grasping old Mrs, Amiel and strident abuse of any who differed from his world view. Immodest as ever, this gabshite poltroon enters the nick, protesting the injustice of it all, proclaiming his talent, his success, his character, his entitlements. People like Steyn shrill hysterically that Black gave me lotsa money, therefore he is a great man. Max Hastings, in his deep brown voice would roar of his own personal integrity, valour and wisdom. Charles Moore, closeted for decades on his dull Thatcher biography will, if pressed, simper soothing, self-exculpatory words. Nobody will be to blame.
This press gang, this cocksucking, shit-eating, bestial, venal, self-congratulatory, inebriate, thieving, vengeful, pseudo-priesthood, intercedes, they say, on our behalf, with our masters, and interprets for us, without accreditation, the subtleties of matters too vast and complex for our ordinary minds; holding to account, invigilating, scrutinising. We need a press gang, they say, to get to the bottom of things, keep things up to scratch; only not, of course, when, dazzled by a rancid creep like Black, they are being paid, buckets, to look the other way.
Never mind Dave Call-Me-Tony-If-It-Helps Cameron et al reforming the sewer in which they swim; time for a period of sustained Up Against The Wall Motherfuckerism.
Quotes from the BBC website
"Feed prices have doubled over the past year "
"British farmers also abide by stricter welfare regulations "
Oh the parallels with our beloved MPs are so delicious.
Um, doesn't HMRC demand that one holds onto receipts for 7 years?
Erm, actually, all restaurants and bars within the parliamentary complex are subsidised by sales of parliamentary merchandise. Although a large portion of that merchandise is bought by tourists, MPs also buy a considerable amount of it (particularly the more expensive items), which are then often given away for charitable causes. So I wouldn't really bring that up if I were Guido.
Lets see what else Guido has on Tango Man...
Loving the unpopular reaction. Default counter-argument is who is the source (when anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the Watson family tree could shake it down), then moves to the usual it's not Guido's tax money because he's offshore.
When I do my tax at the end of the year I have to prove with receipts every penny I claim against tax, whether it's expenses or legitimate expenditure. I then have to save everything for the next six years.
Why doesn't the tax-man simply apply the same rules to MP's?
It truly amazes me that MP's are above the tax rules that they set for us.
The whole sty is full of parasitic swine...
dan said,
you are tom watson, the nulab attack chihuahua and I claim my £5.
Here's an idea. I object to useless ex-social worker Labour MPs pocketing £60k when they'd never earn that in the real world... but I'd like to pay MPs enough to attract serious people from private industry, banking, law etc. So why don't we just pay MPs 10% above what they were earning in their previous job?
I know there are problems with this and I don't know what the ideal solution is. I suspect that people don't mind paying a high wage for a responsible job, but what rankles is when MPs take them for all their worth on the expenses.
I'd settle for a simple £100k, fewer MPs, and each one allowed max 2 researchers and 1 secretary. These would be paid a set amount agreed by parliament. No daily food allowances, no second home allowances, all receipts required.
If MPs faced the same costs as the rest of us, from their own pocket, then they might realise just what inflation is doing right now.
This is priceless......source the Daily Mail
' I love you in a flaming red sari, bangles, chains or failing that in a bikini!' Livingstone race aide's flirty emails to woman whose projects received £100,000...
The Mayor's senior aide sent a string of messages to Karen Chouhan, the company secretary of the 1990 Trust and director of the Black Londoners' Forum.
AND......In one message to the 50-year-old married mother of three he calls darling, he wrote: "I love thee [sic] feet, ankles, legs, thighs, bum and belly, arms, head and brain. But most of all I love you in a flaming red sari, bangles, chains or failing that in a bikini!"
Dirty bastard!!
Lee Jesper for a safe labour seat methinks, he's a five oink man if ever there was one....
MPs may buy a considerable amount of the parliamentary merchandise which subsidises the bars and restaurants....
but I'll bet they charge it to expenses, no receipts required
Anonymous 12.15pm said:
" Anonymous said...
Erm, actually, all restaurants and bars within the parliamentary complex are subsidised by sales of parliamentary merchandise. Although a large portion of that merchandise is bought by tourists, MPs also buy a considerable amount of it (particularly the more expensive items), which are then often given away for charitable causes. So I wouldn't really bring that up if I were Guido."
If HMRC treated you as a normal business... any profits from the sale of merchandise would be taxed.. and the subsidy of food to MPs would also be taxed.
I suggest you learn about the real world... your explanation just shows how out of touch MPs are ...
@ mak
"anyone can see it happens all the time everywhere"
Yep, that's the burden of the complaint - or are you saying so that's OK, then?
As far as I'm concerned what private companies do with their money is their business, but what people using my money do is my effing business. I'm actually bothered about what these thieving bastards are doing with my taxes. Then again maybe you don't pay any.
Why don't the Kinnocks ever get mentioned when 'Snouts in the Trough' comes up? They've got their noses so deep in the EU Trough that all you can see is their trotters sticking out. Perhaps we should refer to them as the 'Trotters' from now on. A more incompetent pair of slimeball moneygrabbers I have never come across.
i do hope they cant claim back tickets for the proms under their allowance????? but still Hodge wants to kill that off anyway.....
Mak-if nepotism happens in family companies in the private sector then it is coming out of their own money.These scumbags are chiselling out of ours.
Wasn't Watson bleating about how the Labour party was his life some months ago?Now we know that it the hard working taxpayer that funds the life of his whole extended family.
Guido - shouldn't you get a foi request in quick for all mps, current and former, with a request they preserve records?
Shredding would be a contempt.
Hodge has said the BBC Proms are not prole enough. Stalin also had this concept of "the people's culture".
Hodge would do better helping Sir Ian Blair with some inquiries into Islington child abuse and any Jersey connection.
Sorry to post again but I just remembered the fuss when my firm last applied for a public contract.We had to demonstrate all manner of things to comply with eligibilty requirements including staff recruitment procedures to show appointment on merit and without discrimination.The great socialist Watson just appoints his family to live off the taxpayer.In his own way he is as bad as Conway because he is such a bloody hypocrite.
BREAKING NEWS: Lee Jasper is a dirty old man.
Grasper bombarded Karen Chouhan, director of the Black Londoners' Forum, with filthy emails.
He said he wanted to to "honey glaze" her before a "passionate embrace" and in another emails he talks about his love of her "thighs, bum and belly".
Days later, the 1990 Trust, of which Karen is company secretary, received a £65,000 cheque from City Hall, home of Leninslime and Grasper.
Things can only get better.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=525684&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770
FoI entitles public authorities which hold records to dispose of categories/classes of records under their published disposal schemes after a specified period of time.
In the case of expenses claims etc that period is three years.
MPs were warned when FoI was passed in 2001 that the disposal period was three years. So when FoI entered into force in 2005 they should have known that their receipts/records back to 2002 (now back to 2008) would ultimately be disclosable.
Grasper and his "honey glaze" lover are mere amateurs. For sheer vomit value, check out La Jacqui and slimeball Vaz making whoopee at the Shimla Pinks Indian Restaurant in Birmingham. Courtesy of The Times.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/politics/images/2008/03/02/kv1_3.jpg
Anon, 1052
http://google.co.uk/search?q=cache:H09I8FPRNRAJ:www.express.co.uk/posts/view/36749/How-a-Labour-MP-and-his-family-are-raking-in-300-000-from-taxpayer+http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/36749/How-a-Labour-MP-and-his-family-are-raking-in-300-000-from-taxpayer&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk
MisterE said... "Well let's hope that some of the greedy little porkers inside the House don't get mixed up in the (flock, herd?) of pigs outside and led off to the abattoir..."
There's no chance of the farmer's pigs and the 'honourable' members of parliament getting mixed up. The pigs are the ones with the honest faces and they don't fiddle their expenses...
Are Tom Watson's family all white?
Not an equal opportunity employer I presume.
Isn't one of Watson's women a full time councillor up in Birmingham and also a full time researcher for a NuLab MP? That is 2 full time jobs, both paid for by the taxpayer. Not sure if it is strictly illegal to be be employing familial individuals in multiple full time positions, but it is certainly fishy.
If a private family owned firm spends its own money on employing family members, that is their business; it is after all their money. The only way these two situations could be comprable was if politics was actually a family business and taxes actually belonged to politicians.
What a frightening thought!
Mark Lister is NOT The Messiah just a very naughty boy and is being shredded as I type.
Most likely pulled for naming names and being factual about the two dinners clan. Cannot, repeat cannot have the taxpayers knowing these details.
The above link works - well done Anonymous 3.13.
@ Stanislav - Words fail me. Liquid Gold. Had feared that that nice Mrs Dale had taken you hostage.
Guido too, thanks to you for providing this service and opportunity for us to protest against the sleaze, lies and hypocracy of those whom serve in OUR name.
Pending Guidos developing story,
I note an anagram for Snot Gobbler's brown nose mate , Tom Watson is..... Am Snot Two
and of course, Gordon Brown is ...Born Do Wrong
Mak 11.43.
MPs are elected to serve the British people and are paid well by the Tax Payers. MPs families are not voted for by the electorate and therefore are not entitled to any form of payment.
My Dad worked hard as a Partner in a Law firm but he wouldn`t allow me to enter the Firm until I had qualified and been interviewed by the Partners, then seved a Year`s probationary period.
As a further point, the Unemployed and Skivers, should not be allowed to vote, if they do not pay Income Tax. That`d sort the Buggers out!
@ bergen / unsworth
No - I think nepotism and a lack of transparency is bad wherever it is - but there's as much of it in the press rooms of the Mail, etc, reporting on this story as there is among the subjects of this story.
Yes MPs are paid from public money (and yes, *sigh*, I am a taxpayer, paying much more than before thanks to Gordo) but they're actually *relatively* transparent (cf that documentary on tonight about quango expenses) compared to many others who control our lives...
Anon at 12.15 - "MPs also buy a considerable amount of it.......... which are then often given away for charitable causes"
Particularly at Christmas, when they were queuing up to buy House of Commons whisky at £8 per bottle by the crateload - think that was all given away for charitable causes, then?
In any case, what has MPs buying stuff from the gift shop got to do with them claiming shed-loads of our money buying themselves expensive houses and "employing" their families at - usually - much higher salaries than the job would merit otherwise?
As for deserving higher salaries - well, you really need Stanislav's turn of phrase to do that nonsense justice. These failed social workers and cookery teachers have never earned this much money in their lives, and when they get booted out of Westminster they never will again. They know this - that's why the snouts are in the trough so deep while they've got the chance.
Stanislav
Dont hold back mate, tell us what you really think.
But please remember that it was always the case. The reason why it seems so bad now IMO is the following.
They are getting rich and free at our expense. At the same time as they are doing their utmost impoverishing and micromanaging us.
Otherwise how much money and freedom they have, would not bother the general public to the acute anger and passionate resentment that it does.
Cameron is not god, neither was Thatcher or even Churchill. What Cameron hopefully is and what the other two were. Are people that believed in the sanctity of individual liberty and prosperity.
Which in my eyes forces me to at least be thankful for small mercies.
You however my friend, have a perfect right to disagree. As you clearly understand our massive problem.
Which is not only already as massive as massive gets. It is getting more terminally massive everyday.
So massive that it would take someone very much like Cameron to even make a small start sorting out even the slightest bit of it.
Atlas shrugged
Anon 2.01...
It's not just the pair of Kinnocks. The whole fecking tribe are it. A great army of thieving windbags - mum, dad, son, daughter, daughter-in-law, cat, dog, butler, budgie - all are sucking away at the taxpayers' tit. £300,000? Don't make me weep. This lot will be shovelling away more than that. (Enough to buy all the leeks in Wales, I expect.)
Didn't the walking-on-water wassock have leaving the EU in one of his manifestos? Horrible, horrible hypocritical half-wit.
anon. 2:01pm
"Why don't the Kinnocks ever get mentioned when 'Snouts in the Trough' comes up?"
The Kinnocks are the labour party's royal family, it's rude to discuss them.
labour trolls,
the question is as follows.
does the lardy arsed cunt tom watson and the members of his family employed by the state offer the taxpayer 300K's worth of value?
if you also consider the huge pension liability this mob are costing us and add to that the further cost of constantly stuffing curries and expensive wines down the neck of 'pigsy' watson then I think the answer must be no.
P45.
this country cannot afford to employ useless cunts like tom watson. you are not in the national interest tom.
look on the bright side however much money kinnock steals he will always be welsh and ginger im not sure which is worse but having gleny on your pillow would make it hellish.
"Guido has a track-record of leading on sleaze stories ahead of the dead-tree-press"
Not on this one - the Sunday Mercury (the local rag in Birmingham) beat you by nearly a day - and the journalist concerned then sold the story word by word to the Express before they removed it for whatever reason. You might at least have the grace to acknowledge this rather than taking false credit.
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