Rolfe
5th February 2010, 02:15 PM
What a train wreck! I'm probably going to launch into my regular rant about central Scotland Labour MPs again. Put a red rosette on a cabbage and they'd elect it. The skills needed to get selected as a candidate for that sort of constituency are not necessarily the skills that make a good MP.
It's an openly sought-after gravy-train job. Their main aim in standing for parliament is to feather their own nests. Get out of that low-grade bus conductor's job and use the T&GWU to get you a nice cushy number. Draw the salary and play the expenses system for all it's worth.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy described the interview as "astonishing", and I'd have paid good money to hear him discussing it with the producers afterwards. I don't think I've heard such a public display of low-hair-line, knuckle-dragging vacuity since the hey-day of Big Brother.
The oddity of this is the actual charges that have been brought. There was good evidence, mostly ferreted out by Paul Hutcheon of the Sunday Herald, that he had fabricated an invoice relating to rewiring of his London flat that had never actually happened. Also, the matter of the many metres of heavy-duty sheving that was never traced. Jim gave several versions of where this expensive item was, first saying it was in his constituency office, then when the journalists couldn't find it there he said it was in his London premises, then when they went there and again found nothing he mentioned the basement of a derelict pub in his constituency. There, although tatty shelving was found, there was nowhere near enough, it seemed to be piecemeal ad-hoc erections of different specifications, and it didn't fit what was described on the invoice submitted. Again, there was the suspicion that the invoice was simply fabricated.
However, he hasn't been charged with that, but about two completely different matters. An invoice submitted for "stationery" which wasn't used to buy paper and envelopes at all but to pay staff, and putting in a prospective claim for cleaning expenses to beat a change in the rules that was going to disallow the claim. He protests that this was how the system worked and he'd been told it was fine to make these claims.
He and the others are now claiming parliamentary privilege to declare that they are above the law and can't be charged over anything they do in relation to their positions as MPs.
I think he's as bent as a corkscrew and I don't think he's the only one. David Marshall of less than blessed memory resigned just ahead of a similar scandal about two years ago. But it's the abysmal intellectual standard of the man that's the really jaw-dropping part. He's literally and demonstrably a moron. A moron out to milk the system for all it's worth.
Why do voters elect people like that?
Sigh. Don't tell me. I know.
Rolfe.
It's an openly sought-after gravy-train job. Their main aim in standing for parliament is to feather their own nests. Get out of that low-grade bus conductor's job and use the T&GWU to get you a nice cushy number. Draw the salary and play the expenses system for all it's worth.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy described the interview as "astonishing", and I'd have paid good money to hear him discussing it with the producers afterwards. I don't think I've heard such a public display of low-hair-line, knuckle-dragging vacuity since the hey-day of Big Brother.
The oddity of this is the actual charges that have been brought. There was good evidence, mostly ferreted out by Paul Hutcheon of the Sunday Herald, that he had fabricated an invoice relating to rewiring of his London flat that had never actually happened. Also, the matter of the many metres of heavy-duty sheving that was never traced. Jim gave several versions of where this expensive item was, first saying it was in his constituency office, then when the journalists couldn't find it there he said it was in his London premises, then when they went there and again found nothing he mentioned the basement of a derelict pub in his constituency. There, although tatty shelving was found, there was nowhere near enough, it seemed to be piecemeal ad-hoc erections of different specifications, and it didn't fit what was described on the invoice submitted. Again, there was the suspicion that the invoice was simply fabricated.
However, he hasn't been charged with that, but about two completely different matters. An invoice submitted for "stationery" which wasn't used to buy paper and envelopes at all but to pay staff, and putting in a prospective claim for cleaning expenses to beat a change in the rules that was going to disallow the claim. He protests that this was how the system worked and he'd been told it was fine to make these claims.
He and the others are now claiming parliamentary privilege to declare that they are above the law and can't be charged over anything they do in relation to their positions as MPs.
I think he's as bent as a corkscrew and I don't think he's the only one. David Marshall of less than blessed memory resigned just ahead of a similar scandal about two years ago. But it's the abysmal intellectual standard of the man that's the really jaw-dropping part. He's literally and demonstrably a moron. A moron out to milk the system for all it's worth.
Why do voters elect people like that?
Sigh. Don't tell me. I know.
Rolfe.