Nadine Dorries, Tory MP, has admitted she claimed her constituency home as her “Second home” for the purposes of claiming vast expenses. So where was her first home? In the Cotswolds, apparently.

Astonishingly, Nadine admits deliberately concealing from her constituents that she did not live either in her constituency or near Parliament.

Nadine Dorries says:

I never wanted my constituents to think that I had another prime responsibility other than Bedfordshire and Parliament; maybe I should have been more open.

http://blog.dorries.org/Blogs/2009/May/16#16

How her constituents will react to being deliberately duped is an interesting question.

So what Nadine is doing is just the same as Margaret Moran is doing. Nadine is basing her claims on having two residences, one of which is neither in the constituency, nor in London. In each case, which they choose to claim on is based on which will bring in more money.

Now to Iain Dale. I already pointed out that in the case of flipping by cheap far right propagandist Michael Gove MP, Dale and other Tory bloggers suddenly had different standards to when they were dealing with identical troughing by New Labour.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/the_breathtakin.html#comments

Iain Dale waxed furious over the “Shamelessness” of Margaret Moran. He fumed that her second home was

100 miles from her constituency and nowhere near Westminster.

Now then, Nadine Dorries’ first home is

100 miles from her constituency and nowhere near Westminster.

thus allowing her to put in huge claims on her constituency home.

So presumably Iain Dale regards Nadine Dorries as shameless, yes?

No. Because she is a Tory, and a mate of his.

I don’t condemn Nadine because unlike you I know the full details of her living arrangements and they fully comply with the rules, as she will be making clear in a further post.

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6214838&postID=2915940623081992628

(11.57 pm at 15 May on this comments stream).

Sickening, isn’t it? What a mighty blogging champion Iain Dale is! When it comes to New Labour, the tired formula of “Within the rules” is not good eonugh. But for his Tory friends, it is a complete exculpation.

Come on Iain, please give us a full explanation of exactly why it is fine for Nadine to do her job from the Cotswolds, 100 miles from both London and her constituency, while the taxpayer funds her large, plush constituency home.

You know, I obviously got it very wrong. I should have been Ambassador in Tashkent from a main Residence in Cannes. That would have been much more comfortable.

Tory blogs had become very popular as showing opposition to a rightly very unpopular governemt. But what the stupid, stupid, stupid thousand times hypocrite Dale shows is that the Tories are just the same kind of tribal predators as New Labour, simply itching for their turn to get their snouts in the trough.

Dale’s credibility as a blogger has been entirely compromised by his support for the Nadine Dorries scam. Actually, he’s only a Tory version of Michael White, with a thin veneer of good nature stretched over the hard party man.

Another Tory blogger, “Dizzy Thinks”, wrote a piece entitled “The Breathtaking Idiocy of Craig Murray”. Note that typically of a Tory, he knows so little of the Celtic nations that he can’t actually spell “Craig”.

http://dizzythinks.net/2009/05/breathtaking-idiocy-of-criag-murray.html

He also was attempting to defend the troughing of Tory MPs from my attack, and he decided the best way to do this was to attack me for being, as far as I can make out from his rant, a trendy environmentalist. He included this remarkable passage on his own virtues:

“I don’t eat organic food, nor drive a Prius. I have a 4×4 and love battery farmed eggs because they’re cheap.”

Which rather makes my point about Tory bloggers. Needled into showing their true colours.

There you have it officially from Dizzy. If you support the squandering of hydrocarbons as fast as possible, and keeping hens in 8inch by 8inch cages, then you probably should indeed vote Tory. If not, don’t vote Tory becuase you will be putting people like Dale and Dizzy in power.

Britain’s most disgusting journalist, New Labour creep and Jack Straw cheerleader Michael White, is on Sky News trying to justify his New Labour chums. He has just let us know that a middle ranking minister, a “Good Chap”, has told him that he was actively encouraged to put in a claim he knew to be ineligible, by the Fees Office.

That information comes from two sources both of which I trust not at all – White and a New Labour minister. He then went on to imply that New Labour MPs are contrite and have learnt their lesson “Unlike Sir Anthony Steen”, and then wound up by warning of the danger that all this fuss will let the BNP in.

White has gone on to say that the Brits are always angry about something, and a poll has shown us to be “the angriest people in Europe”. He then said it was all parties, not just New Labour, called Cameron “Hysterical”, and rattled off the names of four MPs whose cases he thought were “Serious”, all of them Tory.

Why this odious New Labour creep is allowed so much airtime for his government propaganda hidden behind a thin veil of hearty good nature, I do not know. It is bad enough that he gets to bully everyone on the Guardian who criticises New Labour. White is Associate Editor of the Guardian and he regularly hints to other journalists that his friend the City Minister, Lord Myners, Chairman of the Guardian Media Group, will be most unhappy with their anti New Labour stories.

White is the most disgusting reptile in the British media, which is saying a lot. He is on a salary of £182,000 at the Guardian, incidentally.

Gordon Brown will not leave Downing St until the last permitted date, which is June 2010, and then will leave his fingernails in the carpet. It is no good petitioning him to resign.

It is becoming plain that all the political parties are clinging on to the speeding gravy train together and have reached a mutual agreement not to call for any of their number to resign as an MP, even if they give up the odd apointment.

This parliament has to go. We have to work with the unwritten constitution we have. The only person who can dissolve a parliament is the Queen.

The UK constitution constantly evolves. There is no recent precedent for the current total loss of public confidence in parliament. The constitution now needs to evolve to cope with the age of new media. Such a request if strongly supported would become an important political fact in itself.

This is not about whether or not you are a monarchist. (I am not). This is about channeling the unfocused public anger with Parliament into action.

http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/27778.html

(The language of the petition is respectful towards the Queen but not traditional. There is no language which would suit all shades of opinion on the monarchy. I know the Queen personally, enough to know she is not going to be insulted).

We are increasingly hearing the argument from our MPs that if you pay rubbish, you will get rubbish.

There are two problems with that argument. The first is that Nadira and Cameron yesterday left the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, where the nurses and midwives are indeed paid rubbish, but were still absolutely brilliant.

They were motivated by something alien to so many of our MPs, a genuine care for people. They were also, for the most part, a standing rebuke to UKIP, BNP and others who knock immigrants and the role they play in our society.

The second and clinching argument is that our MPs have been looking after themselves extremely well, but they are for the most part of abysmal quality. (The same could be said of our top bankers).

In fact, the reverse of the argument is true. If you make it a gravy train, you get people who are primarily interested in gravy. Like Malik and Moran.

I was reminded forcibly on this when writing my recent post about Michael Foot. I noted that his biography of Byron, The Politics of Paradise, is one of my favourite books. He sat in a Parliament which contained scholars of the highest order. Enoch Powell, Robert Rhodes James, Roy Jenkins, Tony Crosland and Michael Foot are only some of the politicians of that generation who wrote books which retain academic authority. (Don’t choke. Powell was arguably the World’s leading authority on Herodotus).

In the current parliament I can only think of lowbrow effusions. Brown’s curious ghost-written monographs “On courage” are, I think, meant to point up his own courage in overcoming his (genuine) misfortunes. Michael Gove’s mad Melanie Phillips style anti-Islamic rants are astonishingly ill-researched and of no academic use except as a study in prejudice.

In fact for the vast majority of MP’s, it is hard to imagine them reading a book. let alone writing one.

That is a map of Argyll and Bute constituency taken from Wikipedia. It is huge, and as you might imagine communications around it are pretty difficult. It contains at least a dozen different inhabited islands.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyll_and_Bute_(UK_Parliament_constituency)

In a straight line it is about 150 miles from its northernmost to southernmost point. As is obvious, you can’t actually travel around it in straight lines without a helicopter.

Yet those purblind London oriented fools at the Telegraph think it is a scandal that the MP, Alan Reid, claimed £1500 on bed and breakfast within his own constituency. That would be four days stay for Hazel Belars in the Clerkenwell Hotel, but it was in fact Alan reid putting in the hard miles needed to be a good MP in his wonderful constituency – which makes the best whiskies in the world.

The real scandal here is the purblind stupidity of the English idiots of the Telegraph, who thinks that North means Islington and West means Chelsea.

Michael Martin singlehandedly justifies every prejudice we Edinburgh people have against the narrow, stunted, ugly, ill-educated, self-serving, chancing whingers from the West. He shouldn’t resign. He should be ceremoniously drowned in Douglas Hogg’s moat. We’ve paid for it, so we might as well use it.

New Labour have had two Speakers in a row. That is enough. The Liberals want to foist Ming Campbell on us, but he is already as insufferably pompous as he is dull-witted. He would be a disaster as Speaker. They offer Alan Beith as an alternative, but he’s stupefyingly dull.

I am hereby declaring for Roger Gale for Speaker. He is a former Director of Blue Peter. If you can control John Noakes, Peter Pervert and Shep, then the House of Commons should be a doddle. More seriously, I worked with him on election observation in Ghana and he is dead straight, alarmingly energetic and with a real passion for democracy.

I posted this link this morning, but it strangely vanished. I like this article. The comments are good too.

http://simonhickson.wordpress.com/

From Guido’s comments page:

Clapham Commoner says:

May 14, 2009 at 10:03 am

I walked past Harman’s house last night (Herne Hill) and there was a Range Rover outside and a ferrari in the drive.

She is a “socialist” MP and he is a union official.

Go figure.

http://www.order-order.com/2009/05/mps-crying-into-their-subsidised-beers/#comments

I have had a great sleaze wheeze. The news channels are reporting that Douglas Hogg is defying Cameron over any notion that he should pay back taxpayers’ money used to maintain his country estate, complete with moat, housekeeper etc.

The public have been maintaining this property for decades. Surely that makes it a kind of National Trust property? It is a place I would love to see, as it incorporates parts of the original manor of Margaret Beaufort. She was a fascinating and extremely strong woman who knitted together the alliance that won the throne for the Tudors, whose sole claim to the throne came from her. Indeed, it is arguable she was considered a Queen in her own right.

Anyway, enough of the history. We pay for this place, so let’s go enjoy it. Who is up for a Grand Day Out at the Hogg estate in Lincolnshire? Let’s launch toy yachts on the moat, swim in the pool, picnic on the lawns and look round the house.

If you’re interested, let’s put this out in the blogosphere and see how much interest we can get. We could hire some charabancs. We have been paying for this place for years. Let’s get some use out of it!

Michael Foot is now 95 years old. He received an unexpected blaze of media mentions last weekend when polls showed Gordon Brown had overtaken him as the “Most unpopular Labour leader ever.”

I confess to a soft spot for Michael Foot. I have only ever had one conversation with him, about Byron. His biography of Byron, “The Politics of Paradise”, is one of my favourite books.

The sad thing is that Michael Foot was perhaps the most honourable man ever to lead a major political party in this country. Foot would never have dreamed of milking his MP’s allowances, or letting anyone else do so. It is totally inconceivable that Foot would have tolerated creatures like McBride and Draper around him. he was not in politics for backstabbing and smear.

The irony is that it was Foot’s innocence of the dark arts we now deplore in politicians, that led to his extreme unpopularity. He deliberately and consciously abjured the media soundbite, in favour of the well made and complete argument that did not fit in a news bulletin. He absolutely refused image makeover. I remember very well that this came to a head when he arrived at a cold Remembrance Day at the Cenotaph wearing a duffle coat. The Murdoch press went crazy, calling it a “Donkey Jacket”. It was at the tiime as big a media sensation as the MPs expenses claims are today.

For Foot, the commemoration was just that: an act of remembrance of the fallen. He had volunteered to serve immediately on the outbreak of World War 2, but been turned down because he had weak lungs. He went to pay respects to the dead of his generation, not to show himself off. If he had worn a £2,000 cashmere coat, as Tony Blair did at the Cenotaph, he would have cut a better media figure. But he would never have thought of doing so.

I have never been a supporter of Labour. For me, Foot and his generation remained infuriatingly romantic about organised labour and blind to the abuses, bullying and fundamental lack of democracy in the trades unions. The public were not so blind, and this is why Thatcher was able to hold support for a viciously over-radical programme of closing down heavy industry to deny the unions their base.

When I look at Blair, Brown, Blears, Reid, Blunkett, Smith, Hoon, Straw and the others, it is hard to believe that less than thirty years ago their party was led by somebody as genuine, kind, genial and intellectual as Michael Foot. At least he will never again be mentioned as the “Most unpopular Labour leader”.

The rumbled fraudster Hazel Blears has written out a cheque for over £13,000 to the Inland Revenue to pay the Capital Gains Tax (CGT) on her taxpayer-bought property. She had avoided CGT by telling the Inland Revenue it was her main residence, after getting the taxpayer to pay her mortgage on the grounds it was her second residence.

Rather peculiarly, she did not post the cheque to the Inland Revenue, but handed it to a Sky News reporter. I know she is a supporter of the privatisation of the Post Office, but this is ridiculous. Plainly this stunt is meant to improve her image. But the sight of a “Public servant” who can at the drop of a hat dash off a current account cheque for over £13,000 is deeply unedifying. For more than half her constituents, that cheque was for more than a year’s income after tax and national insurance. It was nearly three years of the state pension.

There remain some questions. There will be interest and late payment charges due to the Inland Revenue. Has she agreed the sum with them? And has she calculated the sum due correctly? At the time of the sale, the rate applicable was 40%. £13,000 would indicate it was paid on profit of £32,000. But I am told by a Commons staff source the profit was actually “significantly more” than £32,000.