Nice Apology - Now Where is The Money?

Jaqui 'Does Redditch' Smith gave us a good bit of humble pie, complete with treacly goo and custard yesterday. A big 'Awww, bless' from the audience please.

Sir Thomas 'I'm not pulling your' Legg concluded that she was not to blame for claiming the box room at her sister's flat in London where she stayed while in London was her primary residence. Her account of how often she stayed there differed from the police guarding her but no matter - genuine mistake.

The genuine, administrative and wholly understandable mistake inadvertently allowed her to claim over £116,000 on expenses for her family home in Redditch, where her personal assistant, in the form of her taxpayer paid for husband, was busy watching TV late at night with a box of tissues handy, although records show he did not have a cold. On those cold, lonely nights at the secondary residence, he and the family enjoyed watching all manner of films, and expenses clocked up nicely.

The committee studying all this agreed that the dodgy film claims were not a one off affair either. All in all, she was found guilty of abusing the system and her husband of abusing himself, but unlike her fearless and heroic leader who was ordered to repay some £12,500 of over cleaning bills and a Sky subscription (is there a pattern here?), she was asked to merely apologise.

It just goes to prove that crime does pay in modern Britain. Just become an MP, abuse the system knowingly and then just apologise. You keep what you stole, solve your husband's erectile issues, keep your job, the pay and carry on as if nothing has happened. He official statement basically put it that she was unfairly treated as the rules clearly allowed her to rip off taxpayers. Of course, we should feel privileged to fund her life and that of her husband. For mere mortals like us, the law would never have been so forgiving.

Meanwhile, in defiance of the Brown edicts on paying back expenses, many Labour MPs are joining ranks with Alan Duncan in claiming they have been unfairly asked to pay things back as if on 'rations'. Bless their poor hearts, after all, the rule book was the issue not the thieving swines who took what they could. We should be delighted to pay for all those cleaning, gardening, home help and meal bills - the sort of things our employers and the taxman encourage us to have in our every day life. Not.

Ah, the rekindling of the flame of shame will find MPs in hearty resolve. They are no longer on the back foot as idiots like me will have forgotten that they are pack of pilfering thieves taking our money, abusing their roles and ruining our country. This time around Jacqui is on the front foot, playing the ball straight back down the pitch and her husband no longer has a 'sticky wicket'.

Business as usual - nothing to see here, move along now. The show is over.

Living On Rations

When will they learn? It wasn't enough that the public has already vented its spleen with some venom about MPs Expenses but the fact remains, much like bank bonus-syndrome in the finance world, MPs think they are actually hard done by.

Alan Duncan has made more than a mistake and here is where David Cameron is wrong. The secret film of Duncan's rant to 'Don't Panic' Magazine was the sort of clandestine attitude that needs to be rooted out from politics. But once again, we find it is not the fact that Duncan thinks this way that is the mistake, it is the fact that the stupid idiot was caught. This stems right back to the attitude taken by most MPs when they were caught out pilfering public money - we got a mixture of anger that the Telegraph used 'underhand' tactics to get the inside track, they felt it was an affront to their privacy as they should be allowed to steal in peace and that they were only sorry for getting caught. In very few cases did we get people holding up their hands, showing that they acknowledged they had done wrong and were accountable enough to stand down, knowing full well they were unworthy to hold such an important position.

This is the crux of the matter. When this whole bomb about MP Expenses exploded publicly, the taxpayers were in the middle of being pinched for the cost of the bank bail outs which was not their sphere of accountability. The taxpayer was also being nobbled as more began to lose their jobs and even more were living in fear of losing their job.

Meanwhile, on the political gravy train we had a former PM picking up £4m a year for after dinner speaking and few days worth of non-executive lunches and 640+ MPs feeding at the trough so amply stocked by our tax money.

Alan Duncan is seriously out of touch with the real world when he talks of living on rations. MP committees, which included the very pious Harriet Harman, have shadily voted through that MPs can have £250 per day allowance for which they do not have to produce a single receipt. In fact, many MPs have this allowance actually Direct Debited into their bank accounts regardless of whether they spend it or not on their daily needs to do a job.

Let's get this absolutely clear, this is £250 per day of tax free allowance - not up to £250 - but actually £250 paid on top of their salary, tax free.

Compare and contrast, if you will, the war time rationing which I dare say Mr. Idiot Duncan is referring to. I remember my parents and grandparents telling me the amazingly paltry amounts of daily foods they were allowed and often thought that it was some kind of Monty Python sketch, so incredible was it on what they survived. Recently, Harry Patch, the last fighting Tommy, passed on and he could have given Alan Duncan just a few examples of what rations really were all about.

Of course, the charismatic and all too clever, Mr. Duncan will say that this was not what he meant but the reality is it is exactly what he meant. He thinks he is being hard done by for having £60,000 basic salary a year plus £250 per day tax free to live off plus all the other allowances he can fiddle and fake. He is in the very top quartile of UK earners and there are millions who not only would beg to have the kind of work and hours he does but would be far more worthy and honest in representing their fellow citizens.

Cameron is making a serious mistake in forgiving this ungrateful little twerp. As some would say, sacking is too good for him.

There Are Two Sides To Every Story

Now that the MP Expenses furore has faded, it was safe to think that we had seen the last of the story. Not so.

Recently, the likes of Harriet 'I'm not the problem, I'm the solution' Harman voted through a minor change to the Green Book that allows MPs to claim a flat rate every day for subsistence, without having to submit any receipts, as an additional allowance. That's £9,125 under the new rules that no MP has to justify, just submit a claim and get it - for doing nothing other than turn up for work. Mere mortals like us have to buy our daily meals out of our taxed pay but MPs get a full £9,125 per year as additional, tax free salary that they do not have to justify to us in any way, just for having the title of MP.

£9,125 is an interesting number in a year when numbers have been so big we can hardly imagine what you could buy for the sums - it's one small enough for us to understand, at last. But it's an interesting number in that £9,250 was the amount of money awarded to Cpl Duncan initially after being shot in Afghanistan while another war wounded soldier was originally awarded £8,250 for fracturing a thigh on a training exercise. After taking their cases to a tribunal, they were awarded £46,000 and £28,750 respectively after it was found that both had suffered significant complications after 'recovering'. Still numbers small enough for us to understand.

The MoD is now appealing against those higher awards and is insisting that it should only have to pay the original amounts for the original injuries only - to hell with the complications.

The original amounts - £9,250 and £8,250 - not even two MPs annual tax free subsistence allowance that they do not have to justify with a single receipt.

Campaigners like Falkland hero Simon Weston, who knows a thing or two about wounds, thinks that the MoD are out of touch. I don't think so. I think the whole body of MPs - every single one of them - is out of touch with all reality as well as the goons at the MoD. These smug cowards are more concerned about getting their daily meals paid for than making sure our loyal troops are looked after before, during and after front line service.

This new allowance was voted through by small committees manned by the likes of Harman, Alan Duncan and Nick Harvey who piously told us that the MP expenses system would never again get abused - no announcement was given, no publicity and no debate. Done deal - life goes on, just as it does in the banks.

In a year when we have spent more money on saving the careers of greedy bankers than we can comprehend, we cannot find the the heart and sense to look after our wounded heroes for the want of a few pounds in comparison to the astronomic sums we have wasted on people not worthy of walking on the same ground as our heroes.

This is not just a Government thing - this is every damn Politician who rides the gravy train. They have zero conscience, no principles, no scruples and no guts. We may laugh that the likes of Esther Rantzen is contesting Luton South but at least it will stop the likes of Moran ever getting elected again - let's hope someone with similar morals stands against Julie Kirkbride who just seems to have lost all touch with reality. She lied, cheated and fiddled us out of money for years and she thinks that on the say so of a few deluded locals she should not stand down.

It's a sad day. If the public had a vote, I am sure everyone would vote against MPs having their subsistence allowance of £9,125 and make sure every penny of that money and much more goes into a fund to properly care for the troops who are getting wounded on our behalf and looking after the families of the fallen.

Diane Dernie, mother of Bombardier Ben Parkinson who lost both legs and suffered brain damage after being injured by a bomb in Helmand Province, perhaps summed it all up, given the lifetime of care her son will have to receive after doing his duty. "It is very, very sad that on a day like today, when all the news is as bad as it is, and has been recently, that the MoD can still think to cut what are not overly generous payments," she told the BBC. "It just beggars belief really and proves that yet again they don't understand how people feel about our troops."

MPs are claiming that the appeal is seeking 'clarity about earlier judgements' so that more money can go to the more seriously injured. Given Cpl Duncan is only now serving his first tour of duty since is injury in 2005, it seems to be irrational to use this as such a test case. Further the amount of money spent on legal bills just to get this appealed and heard will be far more than the extra compensation paid out. It would look slightly better if Cpl Duncan had been some 'Sgt Bilko' figure keeping himself away from the front lines and slacking. The fact he is serving another tour of duty, to my mind, renders the argument defunct.

The simple fact is that we are arguing about giving the kid a sum of money just a fraction over what is given to MPs for daily meals each year - every year without question or justification.

How the likes of Harman can simper her rubbish at us and sleep at night is beyond me.