My Brother Died

The long line of excuses from MPs for items claimed on expenses has been extra-ordinary and sickening in equal measure. It's as if they're now trying to convince themselves because the public, not even a small proportion, is buying it.
'Lemsip' Opik, Lib-Dem spokesperson for Astronomy and Meteors, reached new depths of moral degradation yesterday. A well-known self-publicist and ego-maniac, Lemsip admitted the £40 tax summons he submitted as an expense was "probably" not allowed and then went as far as describing this outrage as "provisionally a mistake". But when asked by the Beeb why he had felt justified in submitting it in the first place he sighed, "my brother died...suddenly...I took my eye off the ball".

What? What? It was six months later. Opik really did use his bereavement for submitting this expense. Watch this great Zepellin of arrogance for yourself.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/mid/8047205.stm

Justice Minister, Shahid Malik was making a pretty robust defence of his actions this morning describing himself as," relaxed, content." He had been renting a house way below market rates and claimed up to the max on his 2nd home, filling it with other luxuries such as a £2,500 plasma TV. But two hours later he was told he should step down.

Neither Malik nor Elliott Morley were sacked by Brown and he continues to show precious little leadership allowing the Telegraph to dictate the entire agenda. Let us not forget Morely claiming £16K for a non-existent mortgage was prima facie fraud, worth at least two years in jug.

Brown's pitifully lame decision to delegate the review of claims to Member's Allowances Committee did not attract the contempt it deserved. First it will only assess whether the rules have been breached in invididual cases - hardly the point, John Maples was within the rules by claiming his Gentleman's Club as his main residence. Secondly the Chair of the Committee is Don Touhig who not only 'flipped' his house but organised backbenchers to vote against reform last July. It's like appointing Peter Doherty as the new Drug Czar.

MPs got a flavour of the nation's opprobrium on Question Time last night when the usually restrained British public began the serial booing of MPs. The Euro and local elections on 4 June will be historic, no-one has a clue what will happen but Labour should expect annihilation, Tories may fare a little better. When they see the numbers in black and white then they may just stir from this ethereal sense of superiority.

For Foulke's Sake

Baron 'George' Foulkes of Cumnock took to the airwaves and TV studios today to mount some vague and bitter defence of his old pal Speaker Martin and launch a pointless counter attack on the media over the expenses farrago.
It was probably his own idea; Foulkes captures the grubby, back-biting side of politics which the Government would not have chosen to have representing them at this difficult time. He began by berating Norman Baker MP on Radio 4 as if the general promise to 'fix the system' was sufficient to suppress all dissent.
His performance on BBC 24 a few minutes later, should have had No.10 comms unit on his mobile (if he has one) telling Foulkes to cease this media charade forthwith. When BBC newscaster, Carrie Gracie asked if MPs should pay some money back, all he could do was to turn his spiteful anger on her in a wholly 'ad feminam' manner'.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8045414.stm

Foulkes, still an MSP, has become a figure of fun north of the border. When a blogger started putting obviously spoof entries up about him, his reaction was to report the matter to the police. Not sure if the Constabulary in Ayrshire has a Blog Squad just yet.

Foulkes's manner is irksome at the best of times but his timing is atrocious. We are not pulling out of the worst of this scandal-of-scandals yet. If anything today's revelations are the worst so far. From the long list of staggering claims; Douglas Hogg had his moat cleared; James Arbuthnot had his swimming pool cleaned; Michael Spicer was paid for a chandelier to be installed, his claim for a Christmas tree was turned down.

But it's not all Conservatives. One exchange of correspodence with the Fees Office demonstrates the mental straight-jacket MPs got into over their entitlements. Labour's Tom Harris had £140 claim for baby equipment correctly refused, he responded testily, "perhaps you might be good enough to write to me explaining where my son should sleep next time he visits me in London." It obviously never entered his head that he might shell out the dosh for his son himself.

We are now at Day 5 and it is pretty gruelling at times just taking it all in. So far the focus has been on 50-60 frontbenchers and grandees. There are hundreds more excrutiating details to come from bankbenchers of all parties. Apologies have been forthcoming at least but no promise to pay anything significant back. All it would take would be one big act of remorse (millionaire Shaun Woodward's £100,000 mortgage payments would be a start) and the rest would be compelled to follow suit. So get on with it.

Role of Dishonour

Most MPs have now grasped the scale of the public's anger over their expense claims but I suspect the political storm still can still bring plenty of mayhem yet. The widespread nature of the avarice has perversely provided the guilty with a small degree of collective cover nationally but locally there is no hiding place. Even my timid local press felt emboldened to hammer John Gummer for the £9,090 he claimed for clearing moles and other critters from his Suffolk estate.

The lowlights over the weekend have included Luton South MP Margaret Moran claiming her second-home as a property in Southampton. Her defence that the house was necessary to "sustain her work" was not even substantial enough to describe as paper-thin.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5305166/Margaret-Moran-claims-were-necessary-MPs-expenses.html

One of the biggest jaw-droppers came from massively wealthy Barbara Follett - not the £25k spent on security outside her Soho townhouse, but the £900 spent on insurance for her fine art paintings. Let's not forget Tory James Gray who claimed for a Remembrance Day wreath. Real classy, Jim.

Speaker Martin had the opportunity today to remind all Members of their duties to the public, to restore the integrity of the House etc. But instead he lost his temper with Norman Baker (pictured, pulling an honest pint) and Kate Hoey for suggesting that dragging the Met into Parliament again was bound to be waste of everyone's time. Martin's words to Baker who had actually raised a different point, "another member who is keen to say to the press what the press wants to hear" was particularly ill-judged. The Lib-Dems appear to be the only party who have displayed some degree of discipline over its members' expenses by ensuring their outer London members claim no second homes. Baker himself has led a lonely fight against the covetous and grasping MPs for some years.

In July, he spoke in favour of the comprehensive checking of members' expense claims, "to put audits on the same basis as other public bodies." Of course, the vote for strengthening controls was lost. Sir Patrick 'Curly' Cormack (Stafford) wanted at the time for the record to show, "the behaviour of the vast majority of members has been entirely proper". Oh, who could doubt it, Pat?

Don Touhig (Islwyn) asserted wildly such audits would cost, "millions of pounds" and would be a "waste of public money." He must be feeling a right Charlie now.

Naturally the party in power will suffer the most in public support from this catastrophic loss of trust in Parliament. The first opinion poll in MoS put Labour on 23%, their lowest ever poll in the history of polling. Even Michael 'Donkey Jacket' Foot scraped 29% in the 1983 election.

Phil 'Canute' Woolas was also singled out by Auntie Telegraph following his cack-handedness over the Gurkhas. His expense claim for nappies, kids comics and horrible wine was more pathetic than serial offending. However, unable to gauge the political temperature, as usual, he blamed the newspaper, calling the article "disgusting" and "actionable" based on information which was "stolen property".

Woolas exemplifies where Labour are now; impervious, defiant, arrogant, doomed.

House of Shame

When today's duty Press Officers entered No.10 for the first time, they probably did not envisage a day when he would be defending the PM over a plumbing invoice. The Daily Telegraph's first tranche of revelations over MPs claims for expenses was one of those truly jaw-dropping moments in politics. Journalistically they were, contrary to the protestations of Lord Mandy, entirely justified in focussing on members of Cabinet first. After all they are, at least in theory, in power and able to initiate reform. But they didn't.

Instead they got thoroughly stuck in. Hazel 'Gracie' Blears (pictured) popped up from behind her hedge in Salford this morning and said, with contrived candour, "I live here... and I have only ever had a small one-bedroomed flat in London". Then she bustled off without having the courage to answer any questions. The Telegraph's assertion that Blears had switched the designated second-home status back and forward from London to Manchester to claim a bomb in expenses rather shattered her image as an innocent, sentimental Lancashire lass. Her hard-pressed constituents are unlikely to swallow such patently, self-serving drivel.

The manifold reports, filling ten pages of broadsheet, exposed widespread yet not universal exploitation of the expenses system. Hillary Benn claimed about a piffling £140 of the maximum £24,000 second-homes allowance despite having a constituency in Leeds; his attitude only serves to highlight the unsated greed of his Cabinet colleagues. Benn must be under the impression a salary of £141,000 is quite adequate. Ed Milliband and Alan Johnson look equally monastic, certainly compared to NI Secretary Shaun Woodward. He claimed £100,000 in mortgage payments on his second home, hoping we would not recall the detail that he owns seven houses. Christ on a bike!

Brown gave the Beeb a 30-second interview and between several sickly grins, admitted the system was broke. His claims of over £6,500 for additional cleaning paid through his brother revealed a degree of nepotism together with hints of a disturbing obsession with hygiene. He's in it as deep as the rest and to blame the system is like a bunch of football hooligans decrying the glorification of violence.

They are all holding their breath for 24 hours as the focus will imminently fall on the Tories. In the meantime they simply repeat the mantra that all their claims are within the rules. Those same rules expect claims to be "beyond reproach" and demonstrate value for money. So much for that.

This is not even the end of the beginning. All we can be certain of is the public's anger will outlast their political careers.

Sorry Miss. Won't Do it Again.

There have been several entries in this blog over previous months about the pernicious treatment of the Gurkhas by UK Border Agency. I fear without Joanna Lumley's extraordinary media campaign, the issue would still be languishing at the bottom of page nine in most broadsheets. Although, the Opposition won the vote last week, it was in no way binding and these matters invariably slide inexorably back to the previous policy. Officials and Ministers know the might of Departmental inertia is very hard to overcome twice.
So Ms Lumley deserves immense praise for her tenacity in pushing PM into a corner on Wednesday then ambushing and de-bagging the hapless Immigration Minister, Phil Woolas yesterday. His sullen nodding to her every demand reduced Woolas to a schoolboy sobbing before an imperious and unforgiving school Ma'am.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8037181.stm

The Governmnent is now unable to offer Gurkhas anything less than full settlement rights without resuming the "cartwheel of emotion" as JL put it. Brown used Woolas's massively inflated figures of £1.6Bn settlement costs at PMQs last week to justify the block on Gurkhas moving to the UK. The total was based on the assumption all 36,000 Gurkhas plus at least three members of their family would re-settle here. Many are very elderly and too frail to start a new life. All would struggle to find the (non-refundable) cost of £585 for processing an application for residency plus air fares out of £150 a month pension.

David Blunkett warned Ministers had lost their political antennae on this issue thinking illiberal and tough-sounding immigration policies were always popular. But even the dim-witted Woolas should have realised it was time to reverse a policy which put a Labour Government to the right politically of the Mail and Telegraph.

Cracking Under the Strain

President Obama has made a bold and impressive start to his tenure in the White House. He has had to address some glaring national and international injustices and imbalances - many economic, several strategic and a few simply moral. The last of these has centred most recently on the release of legal memos from 2002 which the Bush Administration used to permit the CIA and military to carry out 'advanced interrogation techniques' - that's Orwellian code for torture. (Incidentally the FBI instantly recognised what these brutal tactics amounted to and refused to follow them).

The lead figures in the Republican Party had the opportunity to disown this dispreputable and criminal episode. But Rove, Cheney (left) and Limbaugh have not only justified the techniques as 'effective' they often also deny, contrary to all evidence, they amount to torture at all. The memos themselves acknowledge the general style of interrogation sanctioned derives from Chinese techniques used during the Korean War which at time Eisenhower and Nixon called 'brainwashing.' During 1945-7 the US authorities prosecuted and imprisoned several Japanese commanders for allowing these exact methods of torture.

The Al-Quaida terrorist, Khalid Sheikh Mohamed was given waterboarding 183 times in a month, so on average six times daily. The reason given for such intensive 'questioning' was the failure of these 'operatives' to admit the (blindingly false) link between Al-Quaida and Sadam Hussein.

Former Judge Advocate General Wallach said, "waterboarding is often described as 'simulated drowning'... it is usually real drowning simulating death". Here Vanity Fair, journalist Christopher Hitchens, gets a taste for what it feels like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LPubUCJv58&feature=fvst

Dick 'Lon' Cheney has been wandering the TV studios to declare the release of the memos can only be understood in two ways. First, the Obama administration believes the torture methods were ineffective; naturally he can show that's not the case. Alternatively, he says Obama and Clinton must believe the US is no longer be under threat, which makes them naive, stupid or perhaps sympathetic to the enemy's cause.

There is of course a third possiblity which is that Obama knows torture is morally wrong, is contrary to International Conventions and amounts to a serious criminal offence. Some of it, like in Abu Gharaib prison, wasn't even used for interrogation and can only be seen as an example of "recreational sadism" as Hitchens himself puts it.

Many of the right's commentators, like Fox News, have tried to take the traditional political opposition against anything advocated by those pinko liberals, but for some it is become a tense internal battle. These guys are invariably proud patriots and at times can't stop themselves revealing how dismayed they are about this obvious moral degradation of American values.

Sheperd Smith has been a news anchor on Fox since the channel was launched in 1996. In the clip below (includes expletives) he can be seen at first wrestling mentally with the justification of torture - then his usual geniality suddenly breaks with spectacular results.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEtFMj6ZiHM&feature=related

Smith's colleague on Fox, Sean Hannity, has no such qualms and last week even volunteered to be waterboarded for charity, the money going to Army families. Those charities would be under huge pressure not to accept funds tainted by this shameful enterprise.

But clearly there is still plenty of room for breathtaking arrogance and crass insenstivity on the right even when the issue is torture. But for a few the moral principle is regaining prominence over the endless political gainsay.

Ooh, Shouldn't be Allowed

To the House of Commons to observe the Members' Allowances debate. Gordon Brown had initiated this event following his excrutiating venture into Youtubeland last week. If all things were equal, he would have been in the chamber himself. Yet, after the previous day's defeat over the Gurkhas right to settle in the UK, he must have thought, only more misery would coalesce around his presence.

So Harriet Harman opened, supported by her keen deputy Chris 'Underpants' Bryant. Opposing was the twinkle-toed and self-satisfied Alan 'Ewing' Duncan (left). Alan fancies himself as a bit of a gag-meister and impressionist and regularly makes a damn fool of himself on HIGNFY. (On last week's show, he said he would like to kill a particular homophobic campaigner - only he forgot to make a joke about it and Paul Merton just eyed him tensely). In the debate, Duncan looked under instruction to adopt a more dignified approach and so left his 1970s jokebook at home.

HH tried unsuccessfully to 'make progress' under a welter of interventions. The Government had set out a series of resolutions but before they could be debated effectively the House had to consider the amendment put down by the Standards and Privileges Committee. It is certainly very rare for an entire Committee to lay an amendment, but these are strange times. Essentially it said, ' it is this committee's role to continue its review into allowances: let us finish the job.'

Hattie then said, she was "minded to accept the amendment." In other words, complete capitulation. Brown's assertion, only eight day's before, there would be a flat rate attendance allowance, was stone dead.

But then a pall of confusion descended on the Opposition benches. Surely it meant all the resolutions and votes on receipts and staffing et al, were not needed now? Speaker Martin said no, even if it were inconsistent, the resolutions would stand for a vote. Duncan said gravely that, "we are entering the realm of lunacy...this is now a feverish shambles."

Brown's revised tactic was to be able to say at the end of the day's business, 'we have voted to make big changes'. So it went on. Most resolutions were quite straightforward; all receipts being recorded is unanswerable and could not cut across the Standards and Privileges Committee inquiry. But there were other more complex and strategic questions, such as whether all MPs' staff should be employed centrally by a new Commons HR Department. The issue involved about 2,500 staff, presumably their future administration would require determining common policies on pay, pensions, grading, terms and conditions. So much for the objective of saving money. They would also be expected to be 'politically neutral' like the Civil Service. No-one explained why.

Backbencher Meg Munn asked, so politely, what discussions had taken place with lawyers on the status of current contracts and the employees' rights. Lawyers, I am sure, would insist staff were at least consulted on the changes. Clearly that had not happened either.

The bearded David Heath, staked out the Lib-Dems objections. Heath, resembling a slightly batey gamesmaster, pointed out there was one matter which the whole house agreed needed reforming immediately - curtailing Ministers' ability to claim second home allowances when they were already provided with 'grace and favour' homes. Yet that point was not to be voted on; Brown decided the Ministerial Code should be amended accordingly - meaning the scope of the change remained in the PM's power.

Brown just couldn't get anything right. At present the PM is acting like a inebriated passenger, shouting directions at the driver as they hurtle unerringly into the darkness.