- House of Lords: claimed £54,441 in allowances for 94 days attendance (£579/day)
- Earns £36,000 as a Parliamentary Consultant to Eversheds LLP for 36 days work (£1000/day)
- Claimed £3061.17 in allowances from the Scottish Parliament between April 2008 and March 2009
- Salary for a Member of the Scottish Parliament £56,671.
So he trousers £110,000 in salary from the taxpayer, more than a government minister. And what's more I am sure that Mr Speaker surely can't approve of his almost hourly visits to the Sky News studios giving his views to the media rather than Parliament....
29 comments:
Oliver Cromwell Speech - Dissolution of the Long Parliament
Dissolution of the Long Parliament by Oliver Cromwell given to the House of Commons, 20 April 1653
It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.
In the name of God, go!
Very interesting to know all this information on his expenses but looking at his interview with the BBC interviewer I don't think he gives a toss to be honest, he obviously feels that he is above reproach himself.
He's another one of the MPs who seems to be ignoring what needs to be done -no matter how painful- and instead just attacks everyone else in the process by spouting out how dishonest and disreputable the media are. How he thinks this is going to help the Labour Party I don't know.
Quite happy to agree with all you say about Foulkes, but Watzername is not worth £30,000, never mind £92,000, and watching Foulkes put the boot in was very funny!
Other thought - at least people have voted for him - she is at a corporation we have to keep at our expense, with no public accountability (we can't withhold the licence fee) and she sets herself up in a "vox populei, vox Dei" fashion.
She said that she would see what the public thought. I can definitely say I'd take fiddling MPs ahead of overpaid newsreaders. And vote against the former when I disagree with them!
As an MP he also managed to get fined for being drunk and disorderly on the way to a vote in the house
@ Half Blooded Welshman?
When did Eversheds hold elections?
Other people have voted for Foulkes did someone write? Ye gads! That corrupt pudding sits in judgement of English Law and meddles in English Policies. Who in England can vote for or against this monster? The same applies to Brown, Martin, Darling, et al.
Send them back to Scotland. We'll take care of ours. Let them pay for, or take care of their own. No more of this.
Who amongst the scurrilous parasites in Westminster will speak out for English democracy, now that they'v helped to bury it under a cloth of soiled tartan?
Foulkes, another Scottish Socialist (and I'm Scottish).
I'm not surprised the English are fed up with the Tartan Mafia. Scotland has too many MP's but Broon will not change that as less Scotties means less Socialists elected.
Had no idea TV presenters earn so much. Time to change methinks.
HAHHAAHAHAHA
He was the most appalling sh!t on the TV - completely out of touch and defensive aggressive.
The fact that the BBC bird is on £92k was astonishing - WFT???
By Cameron's maxim if he gives a few quid back it's all OK and he can carry on as normal.
***So he trousers £110,000 in salary***
The verb "to trouser". Very Wodehousian, Iain.
So let me get this right - he earns MORE than Carrie Gracie whose job as a journalist is to 'speak truth to power' ?
Of course, nobody there is paying a blind bit of notice so he might see that as a waste of money, but hey...
Foulkes has also been accused by the Scottish Government of wasting public and government time money by asking a large number of parliamentary questions, including how much money the Scottish Government has spent on spacehoppers, and how many times Scottish ministers have met with Scottish musician Sandi Thom. These questions reportedly cost the Government nearly £100,000 to answer.
Foulkes is often described by the media as "ultra loyal" to the Labour Party and he has attacked media presenters, saying they were all paid "to come on TV and sneer at democracy and undermine democracy, the vast majority of MPs are being undermined by you" during the 2009 expenses controversy.
He appears to be yet another New Labour politician who has no scruples or morals and has lost touch with reality.
Hourly visits to the Sky News studios giving his views to the media? For anyone but you Dale, hourly would seem rather frequent.
Lord Foulkes has a great love of public service and the spin-offs it provides for his finely tuned commercial abilities.
Known for facilitating introductions and acting as a "sounding board and strategic adviser" for companies like Eversheds LLP, he takes consultancy very seriously.
It is of course within the rules, or the Code of Conduct, as the House of Lords requires.
Being pally with Speaker Martin and Gordon Brown is probably a geographical thing.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock indeed.
For £150,000 he could buy all of Cumnock.
No-one else seems to have picked this up. He accused the young lady (earning £92K) of earning twice as much as an MP (£64K). Is that the standards of maths our rulers and masters use in their day jobs as well as in submitting their expenses claims?
Good work - these figures will be particularly useful in Scotland where he is nulab's Mr rent a quote, And as as far as I can make out from the figures you supply, the best paid politician at Holyrood. Yet he's first to pounce on the indisressions of others
And he also objects to his old chum Michael Martin being called "Gorbals Mick", how about we drop this and Lord Foulkes's own monkier "The Red Baron" for a joint one? - "The Barlinnie Two"
The Half-Blood Welshman @5.52pm
"at least people have voted for him". No-one voted FOR him at the last Scottish Parliament election. He was on the Labour Regional list of candidates and because Labour did so badly in the First Past the Post seats, the correcting mechanism kicked in and to everyone's surprise(including his), Fatty Foulkes became an MSP.He has been a disgrace inside and outside the SP ever since.
Anonymous @6.17pm and Pienomics @6.38 pm
You should be aware that Foulkes is in fact English and attended an English public school.
um - Guido has posted exactly the same figures you've done, yours went up at 17:32 with a credit to a 'reader'. Guido's went up as 18:45. The reader is obviously informing everyone?
For his excuses see:
http://www.yourlothiansmsp.com/home/blog
For Foulkes Sake!!!
Hold on a minute. Can you really call allowances from the House of Lords (travel and overnight accommodation - which sounds legitimate for someone who is an MSP and therefore unlikely to reside in London) salary?
Lord Foulkes is the perfect Labour apparatchik. He has never held a real job outside politics. He does not speak for the people but only for the Scottish Labour movement.
Foulkes was equally aggressive in defence of Michael Martin on the Today Programme this morning, talking across both the interviewer and Martin's critic. He clearly, and probably rightly, feels threatened.
As to his being English (Anonymous 5.32), well he was born in Oswestry but, as Wellington said, being born in a stable doesn't make you a horse.
He moved to Scotland when he was two, came back to England aged eleven. but returned to Scotland (Universlty of Edinburgh) after secondary school, following this with a public service career almost entirely based in Scotland. He helped to draft the Scottish Claim of Right which, inter alia, pledges its signatories to put the interests of the Scottish people first in all their actions and deliberations.
You may think he is English. I doubt that he would agree.
Sorry to be pedantic but he did not claim that amount in allowances from the Lords. You have included travelling expenses in the total. Where travel is by public transport (as in his case it mostly is) this is paid direct. Nothing goes to the peer. Given he travels from Scotland, his travel expenses are realtively high.
At May 12, 2009 6:38 PM , PIENOMICS said...
Foulkes, another Scottish Socialist (and I'm Scottish).
Foulkes in not Scottish. He was born and educated in England and only came to Scotland to attend university.
Just thought I'd put the record straight.
He's obviously made a great attempt to adopt a Scots accent though, not an easy thing to do for someone in their late teens.
Darling is another who is not Scottish although he has Scottish ancestry. He was born in London although educated in Scotland.
Even if he is on the list, he is there because people voted Labour. Various parties had a list system and got no members at the last election, did they not?
Indeed Eversheds do not hold elections Half the Story (now there's a thought to conjure with) - but when did the BBC either? Yet they have the absolute right to vast sums of public money and spend it in this way. Sorry, no, stand by my comment, I don't see how a newsreader, which is neither the most difficult job in the world nor the least sought-after, is worth £92k a year.
Given that at the link you provide we learn that half that first figure is receipted travel and office expenses, and that the other half includes any and all accommodation and per diem costs ... this post and your calculation is at best very disingenuous.
Foulkes is a bruiser and I'd not claim he is the most popular gentleman in the PLP or at Westminster including with the lobby. But that doesn't give you a licence to make his receipted travel costs and his overnight costs for almost 100 days money that he pockets himself.
Are the other figures similarly flawed I wonder? Perhaps not, but must try harder. Things are bad enough across the piece without distorting the true facts.
Mr Foulkes is a disgrace. He probably though is of immense benefit to his political enemies, especially the SNP.
Hearts' fans don't think much of him either after his great love-in with dicatator Romanov and then his petulant 'divorce'!
At May 12, 2009 6:17 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...
Foulkes is an Englishman you apalling cretin..............
By your measure we would be allowed to send back the thousands of English settlers sponging of the Scottish taxpayer up here.
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