Things MPs think we should spend our taxes on

Obviously, not education.

But Tories have tried to claim, according to this parliamentary report, for:

software that used astrology to diagnose medical conditions

costs for maintaining an Aga-style cooker at a house he had rented out

Life imitates art

In this clip from In The Loop, a hapless MP is harangued about a wall which threatens to collapse on his neighbour's mother.

Meanwhile in Parliament, Peter Mandelson is ordered to repay £800 claimed because a tree threatened to… pull down a neighbour's wall.

(T)rough Justice

The Legg and Kennedy reports on MPs expenses are out today and live here. It's not great news: 390 out of 650-odd MPs are being asked to pay some money back.

Even worse - these two reports disagree with each other. Mr Legg decided to rewrite the rules for claims had already been accepted as valid rather than set new rules from a particular date, which seems very odd. Mr. Kennedy thinks this is wrong, and I tend to agree.

However, this is a blog, and so we don't do nuance or fairness. Instead, we poke fun at the minutiae. Luckily, this is always fascinating. How about Tory Sir Anthony Steen, who charged us for 'a flagpole rope and binding' as well as 500 trees and described criticism as 'Jealousy… because I have a large house that looks like Balmoral'. It's overwhelmingly Tories who've been ripping us off, with the notable exception of unpleasant plutocrat Barbara Follett, who spent the 90s ordering Labour MPs to get hairstyles if they ever wanted to govern. She seemed to think that we should pay for (totally unnecessary) bodyguards and fine art insurance… in case you can't place her, she appeared on Brass Eye explaining that internet paedophiles can fondle children if the child presses its face to the computer screen.

Update: Mike Gapes MP has finally come clean and settled his case. He's finally had the decency to pay back that 40p he overclaimed from the trusting taxpayers. The Augean Stables are that little bit cleaner.

The good, the bad and the petty

MPs expenses are endlessly fascinating. Some are holier than thou, most are entirely reasonable, and some defy common sense or good manners. The small claims are often the most revealing

Take John Baron, MP for Billericay. He claimed £10 from the taxpayer… to cover the gardener's Christmas tip! Scrooge!

He is, unsurprisingly, a Tory, and one who particularly hates the NHS and Travellers (by which I suspect he means Roma).

Peter Bottomley (another Tory) clearly fancies himself. He charged us £5.51 for 'art insurance' and has taken out £25,000 of 'kidnap insurance', despite having no obvious personality which might provoke a snatch.

Leading Green campaigner David Cameron MP (who put a useless wind turbine on his London home as a publicity stunt) burns large amounts of oil to heat his Oxfordshire mansion. We pay his bills: I think we're entitled to insist that this multimillionaire installs solar and ground source heat pumps. Despite having £30m+ in the bank, we pay the interest on his mortgage, even though he could have bought his houses in cash. Most of the Tories seem to burn oil - perhaps just to annoy liberals.

Harry Cohen's shower gel costs £34 (something stinks). Derek Conway (very corrupt) had his toilet handle greased (better not to ask). Greedy Gerald Kaufman didn't see why he should pay for Sky Sports in his second home, and charged us. The fees office told him to sod off. He also demanded over £1000 for a posh chair.

Michael Meacher, multi-property-owning former environment minister couldn't pay his bills on time a few months ago. This didn't stop him harassing the fees office for the £1.49 they owned him! Loads of MPs seem to have problems paying council tax and the like on time. Anne Moffat tried (and failed) to claim for air bed insurance! Dan Norris bothered to claim £0.80 for a phone call! Meanwhile, Lembit Öpik called electricians to fix the lights in his London flat. From 418 miles away in his Welsh constituency!

George Osborne thinks he'll be Chancellor of the Exchequer next year, in charge of the country's finances. It's therefore not great news that he'd run out of expenses allowances. Hi colleague Andrew Selous charged £0.55 for a mug of Horlicks! Paddy Tipping (not a name, more of a sport) tried to make us pay for his dog-minding (rejected).

Actually, most of this is rather sweet, if petty.

Tally-ho, chaps

Political floor-crossers are always suspect: rats joining a floating ship. Those moving from Tory to Labour are especially suspect, because the exemplify New Labour's obsession with suck up to the mega-rich. There was a sense that the party didn't examine their political beliefs at all, so keen were they to make political capital from the defection.

Amongst the most egregious of these turncoats were Shaun Woodward (multimillionaire, stately home, butler, MP for one of the poorest places in the country) and Quentin Davies, a brash multimillionaire, portly man who epitomised the Tory Squire tradition. Their reward: ministerial jobs, jumping the queue ahead of qualified, loyal Labour MPs with a history of commitment to the party's beliefs. In most cases, more commitment to the party's values than the leadership, but that's a whole other rant.

So anyway, you can take the men out of the Tories, but it's clear you can't take the Tory out of the men: Quentin Davies, we discover, has claimed from the taxpayer to pay some of the cost of repairing the bell tower on his stately home. At last, Labour has a pig to rival Sir John Viggers (you paid for a Georgian-style floating duck island) and Douglas Hogg (moat repairs, which was a wonderfully Norman touch). Perhaps Davies is a sleeper, a Tory secret agent who laid low until he could do maximum damage…

You literally couldn't make it up (unless you were very cynical indeed)

I've always thought of Blair as a grasping, hypocritical, lying, ideology-free, sanctimonious turd of a human being, so it's no surprise to learn that he's a thief too. It's the small things which reveal a man's character. What other word can describe a millionaire who claims £7000 from the taxpayer to do up one of his houses two days before resigning as an MP and departing public life?

Likewise, how do we trust Gideon George Osborne. Not only is his idea of fun watching his own speeches on DVD: he charges us for them. Even more revealingly, the subject of his performance is Value for Taxpayers' Money. Laugh? I almost wept.

MPs expenses: a Eurosceptic conspiracy?

Nadine Dorries is one of the louder and only semi-corrupted Tory MPs, but she's not taking it lying down - she told Radio 4 that she fears MPs are on the edge of suicides, and that it's a 'McCarthyite' witch-hunt (for which Cameron told her publicly to shut up).

So far, so boring. But now she's gone after the Telegraph - and her blog has been removed at the request of that paper's lawyers. What could she have said? Well, nothing ever truly disappears on the web, so here we are, and here's an extract.

The Telegraph are uncovering a few cases of fraud, but not enough, so they are more than slightly embellishing some of the stories. I write as a case in point.

Enter the Barclay brothers, the billionaire owners of The Daily Telegraph.
Rumour is that they are fiercely Euro sceptic and do not feel that either of the main parties are Euro sceptic enough. They have set upon a deliberate course to destabilise Parliament, with the hope that the winners will be UKIP and BNP.

A quick online check of the Barclay brothers and their antics on the Island of Sark is enough to give this part of the rumour credence.

Another rumour is that the disc was never acquired and sold by an amateur, but it was in fact a long term undercover operation run by the Telegraph for some considerable time, carefully planned and executed; and that the stories of the naive disc nabber ringing the news desk in an attempt to sell the stolen information are entirely the work of gossip and fiction.

These rumours do have some credibility given that this has all erupted during the European Election Campaign and turn out is expected to be high with protest votes, courtesy of the Daily Telegraph, or should I say the Barclay brothers.

Now, if this is all a power game executed by the BBs, how would they do that?
It is a fact that these men are no fools and are in fact self-made billionaires.
I would imagine and believe that if any of this is true, they know the British psyche well enough to whip up a mood of public anger, hence the long running revelations in the DT.

She seems to think that newspaper owners try to manipulate public concern, and rule without every facing the troublesome matter of getting elected - a charge that's been true since the 18th century. It was certainly interesting that the DT didn't give Labour members any warning of what they were going to publish, but gave Cameron et al. a full day for preparation - very objective.

The rest of the world laughs at Parliament

I'm not usually a fan of The Daily Show's gurning and heavy-handed satire, but it's an interesting take on the scandal. Apparently Zimbabwe's Daily Herald is suggesting that their MPs get pay rises in case they're tempted by British-style corruption - things are really bad when Mugabe's having a pop.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Scamalot
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

MPs: what a bargain

Over on his blog, Paul Flynn MP, who's bright and scrupulously honest, has published his monthly expenses - as all MPs should have been doing for a long time. Amidst all the hysteria - justified in many cases - we should note that actually, most MPs do an arduous job, very cheaply. In the US, Congress and Senate representatives have huge staff, cost millions of dollars, and spend a lot of their time collecting money from special interest groups, repaid massively by blocking legislation (e.g. on smoking cessation, or environmental improvement). As the Texas saying goes, 'you have to dance with them what brung you', as Bush certainly did with the oil companies.

Sure, lots of our MPs, ministers - and civil servants - apparently see their positions as opportunities to demonstrate how useful they can be too big business afterwards - but they are mostly honest and hardworking.

I say mostly - let me introduce you to Anthony Steen, knight of the realm and Tory MP for Totnes:

After pondering the question of exactly why people were so angry over his claim for the treatment of 500 trees in the grounds of his house, he offered a succinct explanation today:

"Jealousy". "I've done nothing criminal, that's the most awful thing, and do you know what it's about? Jealousy," Steen said. "I've got a very, very large house. Some people say it looks like Balmoral." Steen spoke out after announcing on Wednesday he would stand down as an MP at the next election. He denied his hand had been forced by Cameron. "The pressure came from the constituents. For the last week I've been taking soundings and they are absolutely beside themselves with anger."

Steen later issued an apology after he was upbraided by the leadership for distorting his talks with Cameron. Cameron also forced the former Tory minister Sir Peter Viggers to announce his retirement after Viggers claimed £1,645 for a floating duck island.

(Report and picture from The Guardian)

Some dreadful political puns

I haven't moaned about politicians for a few days. Why is Hazel Blears still employed, even though non-Ministers have been suspended from the Party for doing the same thing? Perhaps because he'd have to sack several other ministers too, and perhaps because she's vindictive enough to devote the rest of her career to undermining the Labour Party.

Have you noticed that the more rightwing the MPs are, the more corrupt they are? Rob Marris (though by my standards he's quite rightwing): innocent. Paul Flynn: innocent. Dennis Skinner: innocent. Hazel Blears, Geoff Hoon, Tories who charged us for 'duck islands' and moat cleaning: GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY.

There's a simple ideological reason for this. Being rightwing means privileging individualism. The appeal of the Tories and of New Labour is this: do whatever you can to get ahead, and we'll reward you. Everybody else is a loser. So naturally, corner-cutting and fraud is admirable under this system.

Socialism said: there's plenty to go round, so if we work together and look after each other, all our lives will improve.

So socialists don't steal from the citizens and capitalists do.

Pun time. The full details of MPs expenses aren't out yet. Did Bill Cash in? What did Ken Purchase? Did David Borrow? Did Liam Fox his constituents? Is Joan Humble? Were Greg Hands in the till? Does Sir Michael Lord it over us? Is Paddy Tipping a racist sport? When it came to negotiating with the fees office, did Jon Trickett? If so, did Derek Twigg? Was there a Steve Webb of deceit? Finally, was Tony Wright? Feel free to add more…