Friday 7 January 2011

What's he got to hide?

Most MPs are publishing their expenses online. For instance, Emma Reynolds (The Dark Place Northeast) has a prominent link on the front page of her website. She buys cheap train tickets from here to London, lots of paper, gets her phone connection from a co-op, and rents and office. A model citizen.

Let's have a look at Paul Uppal's expenses shall we? We could start with his blog, but oh dear:

The authors have deleted this blog

Where else can we find them? Luckily, IPSA (which processes the claims) keeps a complicated list. What have I learned? That Uppal doesn't turn up at Parliament very often, and goes to a £130 per night hotel when he does. He spent £1500 by June 6th 2010 (i.e. by the time he'd been MP for a month) and hasn't yet made any more claims - I'm sure there will be a big pile of them when the multimillionaire gets round to it, but he certainly won't be drawing your attention to them.

No comments: