Margaret Moran has just signed her own political death warrant. In an interview on BBC News she says she can justify her second home in Southampton because her "partner lives there" and he has worked in the city for 20 years. She says it is the only way she can have a family life. Clearly, he doesn't like going to Luton...
Even if that was some sort of defence - and it is not - it would only stand up if she had claimed the allowance from the moment she was elected. But she did not. She only changed it to the Southampton home a few days before claiming £22,000 for eliminating dry rot. Funny that.
She reckons what the Telegraph has printed is "actionable". LOL.
The woman is a disgrace.
Kitty Ussher is also under fire for claiming to renovate her Victorian home in Brixton.
The Telegraph also says that Tory MP John Gummer has claimed for moles to be removed from his lawn. I shall have more to say on this when I have seen the details!
35 comments:
Iain, are you hearing rumours that Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper are next to be exposed?. Lots of noise in that area, and it couldn't happen to a nicer couple.
Is that possible?
Sounds like a good crack!
The Moron strikes back!
Labour MP's loke Moron (Moran) should be forced to resign - claiming for Homes that are not in the parliamentry seat or in London is farcicle! It is not on and I do not think the flipping that goes on is right either!
Labour = Greedy smelly Pigs!
Margaret Moran is as entitled to a private life as anyone else - but most people do not expect the taxpayer to pay for their private life - and that is what Margaret Moran, in her explanation, clearly expects!
If her partner does not wish to live with her in Luton, and she chooses an occupation that involves living in Luton, then they are personal decisions made about their personal life. With those decisions, as for all personal decisions, are consequences. One for Margaret Moran is that she would have to fund two of her three homes from her own pocket. unfortunately, she thought the taxpayer should fund, at times of high expense, the Southampton home.
Bloggers on Guido are speculating the DT has done a deal to leave Balls\Cooper out of the limelight.
If they have it's a big mistake and undoes the crdibility they have been rebuilding over the last 2 days.
I'm not a bat or a rat or a cat,
I'm not a gnu or a kangaroo,
I'm not a goose or a moose on the loose,
I am a mole and I live in a hole.
I'm not a cow or a chow or a sow,
I'm not a snake or a hake or a drake,
I'm not a flea or a wee chimpanzee,
I am a mole and I live in a hole.
Yarg yarg, quarck quarck, fried boiled or roast,
You're the slick chick I dig the most ,
I'm not a ram or a clam or a lamb,
I'm not a hog or a frog or a dog,
I'm not a bus or a hip-potomus,
I am a mole and I live in a hole.
Yarg yarg, quarck quarck, fried boiled or roast,
You're the slick chick I dig the most,
I'm not a ram or a clam or a lamb,
I'm not a hog or a frog or a dog,
I'm not a bus or a hip-potomus,
I am a mole and I live in a hole. I am a mole and I live in a hole.
That Kitty Ussher letter is staggering.
Here.
Now what about Mr and Mrs Balls?
Don't you think the Telegraph needs to be upbraided for calling Ben Bradshaw's Civil Partner "a boyfriend"?
Check out swimming pools at the same time.
Has Inspector Knacker of the Yard inerviewed Gummer's moles with respect to the leak inquiry demanded by red faced MPs?
Is this low grade Moran connected to the Moran who was drummed out of Lloyds 25 or so years ago for unethical practice?
Yup. Her comments were an insult to the intelligence - and, more importantly, to her constituents.
She's on a different planet. What did she want, sympathy?! Is she just thick?
She's cheated the system - and the people - and she has to resign. Her poor old partner is gonna have to pay his own way for a change - like everyone else has to.
And if she thinks being an MP is 'very stressful' - that she can't hack it, in other words - then she shouldn't be one, should she?
Oh how the good people of Luton must be impressed with her.
So she's not conning the House as her real home is in Southampton. She must then be conning her constituents by claiming to live in Luton when she doesn't. She cannot have it all ways.... although that's what we have been paying for up to now
These MPs seem totaly oblivious to the workings of that department that all the rest of us are all to aware of when we earn money, namely the HMR&C. You have to pay taxes to them not only on direct payments from your employer but any indirect payments you claim on said employer.
Liability for any additional tax is assessed in a category known as; "BENEFITS IN KIND".
Familiar to many will be the company car but, it does not stop there, any gift you receive from an employer like a; a new kitchen/ a patio heater/ payments to a cleaner, can all have a value attached to them and be subject to tax at your appropriate tax payment threshold.
This is what happens to everyone else in any other walk of life, so our MPs can only say they "have operated within the rules" if they have declared all these "BENEFITS IN KIND" to the Taxman.
Why don't you ask a few questions Iain?
I suppose we should be grateful that Gummer wasn't claiming for moles to be removed from embarrassing parts of his anatomy, rather than just his lawn...
How Gordon Brown cashed in on his flat that the taxpayer funded:
Gordon Brown gave his £700,000 flat in central London to his wife Sarah weeks before he moved into 10 Downing Street
Then the Flat Brown gave to his wife had what is thought to be a lifetime mortgage taken out on it, the property was valued at £700,000. To explain what a lifetime mortgage is you usually take equity out - usually a maximum of about 50% and the rest of the property revert to the ownership of the organisation that gave the lifetime mortgage when the policy holder dies. So Sarah Brown could well have taken out in equity at the top of a housing boom £350,000 - which Gordon will have paid next to nothing on.
I should imagine when he bought it for £130,000 he charged any stamp duty to expenses or it was in a stamp duty holiday (Don't know what taxation arrangements were in place in 1992). Of course Gordon claimed the flats mortgage interest throughout that period.
These Mortgages are not normally given to 43 Year olds but used to fund Pensioners Retirement. The Organisation involved was of course Lloyds TSB – Does this ring alarm bells to you as it does to me and the potential Tens of Thousands of Jobs to be shed at Lloyds TSB/HBOS is testament to Brown misjudgement and cosy deals with his Banker friends.
Here is a Daily Telegraph link to the Mortgage spin back in 2007 before MP’s expenses blew up. Does he think people are stupid in not realising that Brown bought the property in Opposition from one of Robert Maxwell’s failed companies? Brown Claimed the interest on it up until becoming PM – transferred it to his wife who is significantly younger than him and likely to outlive him, who will be able to use the flat up until her death whilst having extracted money from it in 2007 at the very top of a housing Boom Gordon Brown created? Looks very Dodgy to me!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1556730/Flat-deal-will-mean-tax-savings-for-Brown.html
Of course if Sarah Brown rents the flat out to a tenant then it is taxed as her income and not that of her husbands – it is an arrangement that the Brown’s cannot fail to win:
http://tinyurl.com/qs8j78
The Telegraph is backtracking on the Brown cleaning payment disclosure saying that the system's complication led to this. What tosh! It was Brown who made a straightforward transaction complicated. Why would anyone pay their brother to pay their cleaner rather than pay the cleaner directly? Any expenses' auditor worth their salt would raise their eyebrows at that and investigate.
Moles are unacceptable in politics!
Katy Ussher has the usual career profile in NuLAb. PPE at Oxford then a glittering career at the Economist before scuttling into various roles as a SPAD.
She is MP for Burnley but the local press have been pointing out that despite this she never mentions the town in Parliament, lives in London and is rarely seen at local football matches despite her avowed support for the team.
I wonder why she is never up there? Well, you know what its like. You wake up on a Saturday morning in London, the kids are narky and there's a another sheaf of expense forms that want signing.
So as you lie there looking at your gold leaf encrusted ceiling you think to yourself, shall I just nip up to Burnley to watch the match? Nah.....
But she's a strong and concerned constituency MP and on her website offers clear advice to those hit by the Credit Crunch. Real help for real people, she says and eulogises the role Gordon is playing in helping people.
http://www.kittyussher.com/creditcrunch.html
Strangely despite all the advice she provides there is no mention at all of her own way of staving off the credit crunch nor any suggestion how her fellow citizens of Burnley(don't laugh now) can get access to the same level of largesse.
Moran is bang to rights. The rules are clear that the Additional Cost Allowance is “for expenses wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred when staying overnight away from their main UK residence…for the purposes of performing Parliamentary duties". (Direct quote from the Green Book).
Having a quiet weekend away with the boyfriend doesn't quite cut it against that definition, does it.
She is damned with her own words, this is clearly not within the rules they all seem to be claiming to be working to, so the money should be repaid.
If she refuses, it is a fraud, a crime. She should be prosecuted for malfeasence in public office or procuring a pecuniary advantage, (cash to you and me).
"She reckons what the Telegraph has printed is "actionable""
She's going to have to sure the Daily Echo in Southampton too. Local readers aren't impressed
http://www.thisishampshire.net/news/4355769.Labour_MP_claimed___22_500_for_doing_up_Southampton_home/
Bottom line: The politicians wont do much about any recession or credit crunch, unemployment etc until they feel it themselves.
The recession clearly doesnt affect them AT ALL and it should.
The law needs changing and not by them!
That was some staggering brass neck, I'm contacting the police and I suggest others do the same. I would love to see her and Woolas sue the telegraph.
it's a tragedy we don't have the option to force the recall of these self-serving hypocrites. In the US, governors who are found to be corrupt or incompetent can be removed from office by their electors.
Here? They know they can stick it out, promise a bit of reform down the road, but they'll still hang on to their second homes, fat bank accounts, silk cushions and ride-on mowers.
It's time to fire the lot of them. Not just those who've been dipping into our pockets, but all those who've stood by and let it happen.
Then we sue them for every penny.
Anon 11:52 PM,
The bit about the claimed expenses being neccessary means, to me at least, Brown should never have claimed for the cleaning bill. He didn't need that flat for his duties as an MP as he has lived in grace and favour homes since 1997.
As a Labour Supporter I say this to all MPs of all persuasions
"It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice, ye are a fractious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esua 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 bartered 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 defiled this sacred place, and turned 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 redressed are yourselves become the greatest grievance. Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean Stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this house; and which by God’s help, and the strength of he has given me, I am now come to do; I command ye therefore, upon peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place; go, get ye out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, GO!
Oliver Cromwell.
"She reckons what the Telegraph has printed is "actionable". LOL."
I'm sure it is, but the action is lkely to come from the Standards Committe or the police.
It would be amazing if she took it to court, though - she'd get, publically, torn to shreds.
One of the conditions of the ACA is that persons, close to the MP, may not benefit from the expenses - she freely admits that her partner benefits - she's breaking the rules.
As she has opened up and given us an explanation into changing her second home designation and clamming £22k for dry rot.
To clarify the situation why doesn’t she give us the details of the survey that took place to discover the dry rot? I'm sure we will find the survey and quotation took place before she changed her designation. If this is the case the police should be called in as this is obviously an open and shut case of fraud form another MP dog shite scum!
How about this blog's much loved Hazel Blears? She has conned the texpayers and deserves to be fired.
The moles have every right to a quiet life - I never do anything to upset the ones in my own garden. At least they don't charge the cost of digging their holes to the taxpayer.
i heard her say on radio 4 this morning (part of a interview on this sunday's bbc politics east) that the southampton house was justified (in her mind at least) because her partner of many years (20 or 30 -she seemed uncertain)lived, and presumably worked, in soton and if they were to have any life together she must have a home there.
1 were the luton voters aware of this when she stood for election ?
2 what did she and her partner do for a home in soton prior to being able to access aca ?
3 the description she gave of the pressure and stress of an m.p.'s
life wa so distressing i wonder that the voters could be cruel enough to even think of returning her next time
"The Prime Minister has said it is not acceptable and therefore it will not be accepted.
"It might be enforceable in a court of law this contract, but it's not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that's where the Government steps in."
Guess who?
Some MPs still don't get it, do they? The scandal isn't that they've done something illegal, it's that they what they're doing _isn't_ illegal.
I agree with Ms Moran. MPs should have third homes away from Westminster and away from their constituency where they can relax with their partners and family.
I am sure, as she points out, that would help to make them more effective MPs. As a taxpayer I am more than happy to help out in this way.
now, the old rules were that 2nd homes were always in London, who can guess who was the FIRST person to 'flip' their home????? OH I WONDER!
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