Snouts In The Trough

Geoff Hoon (pictured left) is the latest elected 'representative' to be outed as a serial greedy bleeder. It's funny how there is a much higher proportion of New Labour MPs snouting excessively than there are Tories. But then again, I've always felt it was the socialists, if that's what New Labour piggies are, who were much more obsessed with money, and amassing it, than any other political group. Or possibly most Tory MPs have enough dosh already to not feel the need to bleed the taxpayer blind, I'm not sure.

Hoon had a grace and favour place in London, was claiming for a constituency home and renting out his London home. This was at the time he was leading the government charge to bomb the crap out of Iraq. As ever he claims to have only claimed what the rules allowed. As I've said before, just because you can doesn't mean you have to you greedy git.

Meanwhile there have been more revelations about Jacqui 'Stalin' Smith (pictured above right). She claimed £120 on expenses to buy a video player for her home. Over £500 went on a bed settee, and £350 on plant pots. Surprised she didn't also claim for pot so they could enjoy a spliff while watching the porn she had also claimed for!

Meanwhile Rudi Vis, anonymous 68 year old MP for Finchley and Golders Green, has used his 'excessive' allowances in a very imaginative way to fund his £550,000 retirement home. Thankfully this little piggy retires at the next election.

And so it goes on, and on, and on.....

Stinking MPs

Here are the top five parasites for expenses claims:

Eric Joyce (Lab: Falkirk West) £187,334
Michael Connarty (Lab: Falkirk East) £183,466
Alistair Carmichael (Lib Dem: Orkney and Shetland) £176,190
Ben Wallace (Con: Lancaster & Wyre) £175,523
Mohammed Sarwar (Lab: Glasgow Govan) £174,882

That Ben Wallace is on the list doesn't really surprise me. He represents the neighbouring constituency to mine, and has always struck me as being second only to Nigel Farage in being the politician you would be least likely to buy a second hand car from.

I was going to stand against Wallace in the new constituency of Wyre and Preston North, shame I'm not now. But I'm sure I'll pop up somewhere in the general election, it would be rude not too, but where I'm not sure yet. Watch this space.

The State Of The World

Since walking away from top flight football in 2005, many people have asked what made me, and thousands like me, turn our backs on the beautiful game. In a word disillusionment.

Money had taken over, the fans were being ripped off. The players in many cases, not all, were taking the mickey and football as a spectator sport had lost much of it's fun. It seemed to be reflecting the world, we were being legislated out of the game.

Admittedly watching football in the 70s and 80s had its scary moments. Supporting United at Chelsea or West Ham in those days took particular strength of character, not to say stupidity, but eh, I survived.

Terrace surges and standing on an uncovered terrace in the February sleet were all part of the fun. As was running the gauntlet of City fans through the back alleys of Moss Side after a Maine Road Derby. Now it really is like going to the opera, to the extent that an overbearing jobsworth at Middlesbrough FC recently wrote asking fans in one section of the ground to stop making so much noise.

It's quite simple really, football as a spectacle, has been sanitised beyond recognition. The best way to find out how this mess came about, the corruption and greed that have destroyed the game as we knew it, is to read David Conn's excellent book The Beautiful Game? . Even a hardened cynic will be shocked by the financial goings on revealed in this story of the financial rape of football in England since the early 80s.

In the meantime this excellent short film sums it all up nicely:

Politburo Tactics

The more oppressive our police state becomes the more secretive become the politicians and bureaucrats. According to this article in the Mail on Sunday our MPs are now going to extraordinary lengths to hide the full extent of their corruption from us. Thanks for bringing this out goes, once again, to The Taxpayers' Alliance.

Contrast the methods of our current batch of MPs with the late Enoch Powell. Despite being one of the most controversial figures of modern politics his telephone number and address were in the London telephone directory until the day he died.

The United Nations

If you still have any doubt that the UN is thoroughly corrupt and unreformable then please read this.

Time to abolish it or at least for the UK to withdraw.

Snouts in the Trough

The pigs are wallowing in muck again, this time it's Tory MP Derek Conway. Is stupidity the most important qualification for being an MP in modern Britain? Apparently the answer is yes, and it was perhaps a superfluous question. Don't forget that nice Mr Osborne, Tory prat for Tatton, is also being investigated by the authorities over £500,000 donated to help him run his office, some bloody office that must be!

Now I am not a one to slag off MPs, or others elected to public office, who employ family members to work for them. If a wife, or another relative, is qualified to do a job on your behalf then you would be a fool not to employ her. You only have to consider the backstabbing and plotting that seems to motivate too many in politics to conclude that employing a politico carries a certain risk. Now, unless your marriage is rocky in the first place, or your family is the kind that leaves horses heads in rivals' beds or shoots people when they are eating spaghetti, then employing a family member is a much safer bet.

However, when a politician employs a son who is doing a full-time degree course nearly 300 miles from his constituency, and there is no record of him lifting a finger on behalf of his 'employer', then that stinks and is a clear misuse of public funds. A 10 day suspension from parliament is no punishment whatsoever, a parliamentary by-election should be on the horizon.

If anybody still thinks that life would be better under the Tories then think again.

Or is all this sleaze designed to justify taxpayer funding of political parties?