I don't believe the judge was silly. The lie was a deliberate attempt to pervert justice. His position and (supposed) standing makes the situation worse.
How would he, as a judge, view such an attempt to evade a fine if it was presented in his court?
If he is losing his faculties, I wouldn't want him a) driving or b) being involved in any court case.
I also believe MPs with dubious expenses claims fully deserve exposure and censure, whether it's for adult movies or claiming rent on properties already owned.
These people are only "betters" when they prove themselves to be untouchable in terms of behaviour, morals etc.
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Perhaps 'betters' was misjudged. But this judge has had a distinguished career which can't have resulted from jinking and dodging. He isn't the man he was.
And politicians may deserve exposure when they do things we wouldn't want them to, which are illegal. But do we want Raw Meat III for a fiver to be at the sharp end of our public political discourse, or NoW/People/Sunday Garbage reptiles to be the guardians of public morality? Others may not mind this sort of thing but it makes me want to puke.
Edited by Lud on 30/03/2009 at 16:28
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NoW/People/Sunday Garbage reptiles to be the guardians of public morality? Others may not mind this sort of thing but it makes me want to puke.
But people buy it. Even as I recognised that the story was utterly un-newsworthy in the grand scheme of things and annoying for being there at all, the potential for embarrassing the government still amused me a little. I know it shouldn't, but...
If the bottom-feeder who bothered to find it out and publish it hadn't bothered, some other bottom-feeder, drawn from the ranks of those whose life revolves around venting their righteous indignation at this sort of nonsense, would have done.
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amused me a little. I know it shouldn't, but...
I know GJD. One can't help laughing when the incompetent bomb disposal man has his elbow jogged just as he is trying to figure out the mechanisms of a ticking dirty time bomb...
some other bottom-feeder, drawn from the ranks of those whose life revolves around venting their righteous indignation at this sort of nonsense, would have done.
So that's why this piffle is the lead story in the broadsheets today.
Politicians should be criticised on the basis of their tactical, strategic and ideological triumphs and blunders, not for a couple of spots of dried urine on their second cousin's boot. There's a feeding frenzy around MPs' expenses at the moment. It appears the carphounds regard them as part of the salary, and some are very dedicated and greedy in playing the system and stretching, sometimes too far, the legal envelope. Expect prolonged special commission reports and eventual, fairly ineffective, reforms.
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and eventual fairly ineffective reforms.
That's my main concern. We'll either get all talk and nothing changing, or we'll get some preposterously rigid set of over-regulations, the enforcement cost of which will dwarf by some orders of magnitude any savings in uncovered fiddled expenses.
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I think it is entirely appropriate that people who purport to be the guardians and creators of our 'free' society should have the highest possible personal standards and have their expenses rigorously examined and audited. Try this for a bit of greed in public office
tinyurl.com/cah2e7 It may be within the letter of the law but do those of us who actually pay for this freeloading think it is right and moral?
.
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 30/03/2009 at 20:21
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I'm aware of a situation where an English High Court judge avoided a breath test failure because his sober passenger stepped up when the constable asked who was driving at the time of the crash. It was dark, and he had not been seen at the wheel at the time of the crash. Both parties are now dead, I might add, through old age. He'd crashed into a stationary and empty car, and no-one was injured.
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A high court judge in Sussex, notably reactionary as some judges are, used to drive home from the railway station every evening ripped as a stoat after a few stiff ones at his club. One evening a Labour-voting porter or station attendant bubbled him to the fuzz, and he was busted and banned. Happened about thirty years ago.
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'The accused was as drunk as a Judge, your Honour.'
'I believe the correct expression is "as drunk as a Lord", Counsel'
"Yes, my Lord."
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If he has Alzheimer's Disease, he won't be doing porridge.
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A well known captain of industry escaped prison on the Alzheimers Plea, many years ago, and within months was giving £1000 a day seminars in the city on Management stuff. I would think Alzheimers is as easy to fake as a bad back, although I know there are now blood tests for the former.
Edited by Armitage Shanks {p} on 30/03/2009 at 19:12
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have to disagree with you on this one Lud...
I object, greatly, to a politician ripping hell out of the expenses system, that let's face it, we're all paying for....and if her husband thinks it's reasonable to claim for 2 dirty videos (or the modern equivalent)...then what else is she/they fiddling?...That has to be in the public interest to print....although i'd agree if it were the average celebrity, it would be no one else's business
to get back to the judge....he's committed a serious offence because he thought, incorrectly, he could get away with it...ho hum, got caught, too bad.
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Westpig is of course quite right - the last sentence sums it up perfectly.
A frivolous thought -
"Sober as a judge"
"Drunk as a lord"
What does that make a Law Lord?
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Raw Meat III for a fiver isn't really ripping much out of anything though Wp. Purely technical and small-time, not worth a law officer's real attention as I am sure you would often think yourself.
As for the judge, it was for the courts to decide, and they decided. What I was talking about was the overrated Clive James. Talented, yes, but far from perfect. A bit of a soft target addict really.
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The sentence in the article that summed it up for me was, "Court is where the lying has to stop, otherwise there can be no justice".
No sympathy.
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and if her husband thinks it's reasonable to claim for 2 dirty videos (or the modern equivalent)...then what else is she/they fiddling?...
Possibly nothing. The trouble with making such a song and dance over such a trivial amount of money is that it's the sort of thing that could quite conceivably be a genuine, innocent mistake. The subscription TV service is already there. Now, replace a few quid for a couple of naughty movies (which I'm quite certain is the only reason this story has received anything like the coverage it has) with a few quid for a couple of pay per view football matches. Who could possibly object to someone intending to spend their own money on that, and who could genuinely, hand-on-heart say that if it were them a month later when the bill arrived, they would be 100% immune from honestly accidentally forgetting to pay the football part out of their own money.
Or it could be a case of knowingly and deliberately fiddling the claim at our expense.
That has to be in the public interest to print....
Not for a few quid. It's in the public interest for a journalist to investigate further, to discover whether it was an honest mistake or genuine fraud, and if the latter, whether the total fraud is big enough to be worth bothering to tell us about.
Of all the underhand dealings, lying, hypocrisy and fraud that might be going on in society, in business and in politics, if a few quid on the part of an MP's spouse is the best the press can come up with, then either we live in one of the most decent, honourable and honest societies ever to have existed, or the press are being particularly rubbish at their job today.
although i'd agree if it were the average celebrity it would be no one else's business
Not sure how being a celebrity makes a difference. The issue is around obtaining public money by fraud. That's a concern whoever's doing it - you, me, the Home Secretary's husband or the average celebrity. On the other hand, if you, me, the Home Secretary's husband or the average celebrity were to choose to spend our own money on renting a couple of naughty movies, that would be no one else's business.
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>> and if her husband thinks it's reasonable to claim for >> 2 dirty videos (or the modern equivalent)...then what else is she/they fiddling?... Possibly nothing. The trouble with making such a song and dance over such a trivial amount of money is that it's the sort of thing that could quite conceivably be a genuine innocent mistake. The subscription TV service is already there.
My understanding is that she can claim for broadband internet but not the TV... the bills are itemised so there was really no excuse for it... as to what he was watching I don't particularly care and feel that it was a red herring to make the story appeal to certain types of "reader"...
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the bills are itemised so there was really no excuse for it
I've made expense claims from itemised bills before where some of the items are business expenses to be reimbursed and some are personal for me to pay. To the best of my knowledge I've not made a mistake yet. But I certainly wouldn't claim that if I was doing it month in, month out I would somehow be incapable of making such a mistake. I don't think it's reasonable for me to expect from other people a greater level of perfection than I could guarantee myself.
The story was all sensation and little fact. From what fact there was I saw no attempt to determine whether this particular instance was an honest mistake (not in the least bit newsworthy under any circumstances) or a deliberate lie (not in the least bit newsworthy for the trivial amount of money involved unless and until it was revealed to be the tip of a non-trivial iceberg).
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Agreed. I must admit that I'm enjoying the irony of a Home Secretary who so avidly supports blanket surveillance and intrusion into citizens' lives being caught out in this way.
Remember, if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. Ha.
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GJD, I would agree with you but on the Virgin bills we get its got each item (phone rental, broadband, etc) listed seperately and they won't change from month to month so neither will the claim, any films are listed seperately like the breakdown of the phone calls, which is also seperate.
If I got paid 40k a year I'd expect people to expect me to get something so mundane correct.
Quite honestly I feel they've been trying it on and have now been caught, just like the majority of those spongers who work in the House of Commons...
I sometimes feel that I am in the wrong business! ;)
Edited by b308 on 31/03/2009 at 13:13
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If I got paid 40k a year I'd expect people to expect me to get something so mundane correct.
I dunno about that. I've known people paid that sort of money or more who, while they might be geniuses in their chosen speciality, find the mundane and ordinary to be a bit beyond their capabilities. :-)
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It was a 'grab what you can fest' from the public purse, yet again. The fact that it was two 'X' rated films is neither here nor there, other than the fact it is virtually impossible to argue there was any legitimacy in claiming it.
If it was someone in the public eye, caught out by some red top sting, just because it had some salacious detail to the story then i'd agree it was over the top and none of our business....however it wasn't....it was another story of snouts in the trough
Hope she falls on her back side over it...as does Tony McNulty for claiming he does constituency work in his parent's semi-detached house, despite the fact he has constituency offices nearby...yeah right.
If a politician were to stand up and say the balance of pay for M.P.'s isn't what it could be compared to other professions, so the extra is made up of allowances to balance the books, then the honesty would be a plus point in my book....even if some disagreed with that principle...but to blatantly lie about it is the main bit where it goes wrong IMO.. it badly demeans their role and leaves them as thoroughly untrustworthy.
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It was a 'grab what you can fest' from the public purse yet again.
How do you know that? It may well have been. I simply think the press deserve nothing but criticism and disgust for being too stupid to know the difference between "could be perceived as a grab what you can fest" and "could be shown to be a grab what you can fest", or for understanding the difference but thinking it doesn't matter. That badly demeans their role and leaves them as thoroughly untrustworthy.
If the press are unable or don't bother to distinguish between gossip that can be presented to give the impression of a story and actual facts that back up a real story then we whose money is being misappropriated have almost no way of knowing how big the problem actually is (which, though it should not be, is different from how big the problem is presented to be) and therefore no way of judging whether any proposed solution is likely to be proportionate or effective. That is hardly helpful.
Edited by GJD on 31/03/2009 at 15:49
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>If the press are unable or don't bother to distinguish between gossip that can be presented
>to give the impression of a story and actual facts that back up a real story..
Nice try GJD but this is a real story. The media simply reported that the Home Secretary had claimed taxpayer's cash for adult movies. That is a fact. It is backed up by copies of the submitted receipt. No question, no doubts. Apologies all round, here's a tenner, back to the trough.
Maybe we will have an independent review into what lessons can be learned about why her PA made the mistake, why she signed off the claim without spotting the mistake and why it was approved without question? Perhaps the £92,587 she claimed in Staffing Costs in 07/08 didn't include a few hundred quid for an accountant to give her expenses a once-over.
It is also a fact that she designated her sister's spare room as her main residence, coincidentally allowing her to claim more taxpayer's cash for the property where her PA/husband and children actually live. This is despite another inconvenient fact that she has a grace and favour residence already bought and maintained by taxpayer's cash. A large grace and favour residence with security detail and staff yet the taxpayer still has to stump up the additional security costs so that she can spend "most nights" noshing a takeaway kebab in her sister's spare room in a small London terraced.
And pray please tell how we are supposed to establish actual facts when most of these grubby little MPs are fighting tooth and claw to conceal where our money is going?
"Hardworking families" have had enough so I'm buying shares in rope manufacturers. They'll be working overtime if those in Westminster think they can continue to treat Joe Public as fools and carry on as they are.
They do have good taste in cars though. The XJ is a peach.
Kevin...
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Nice try GJD but this is a real story. The media simply reported that the Home Secretary had claimed taxpayer's cash for adult movies. That is a fact. It is backed up by copies of the submitted receipt. No question no doubts. Apologies all round here's a tenner back to the trough.
Precisely my point. That's not a story. It's just some uninteresting facts. Hypothetically, if the system were operating honestly, and as effectively as reasonably achievable, I would expect:
The level of deliberate expense fiddling to be zero
The level of genuine mistakes in claims to be small but not zero (measures to absolutely guarantee zero would cost far, far more than they could ever save)
The proportion of those genuine mistakes that get spotted by the accountants employed for that purpose to be high but not 100% (measures to guarantee 100% would cost far, far more than they could ever save)
Therefore, the only things that are newsworthy are big genuine mistakes (£10 is not big) and cases of deliberate fraud (the one fact missing from this story and your list)
Occasional, small genuine mistakes are expected and unavoidable. They are no more newsworthy than reporting that the sun rose in the East this morning.
What makes this so much more frustrating than most of the rest of the non-news we are subjected to, is that there does appear to be a real problem here and the job of the press is supposed to be to expose the problem and help us understand its *true* scale and nature, not to tantalise and titillate with playground gossip and suggestion. Rubbish like this story serves only to muddy the waters and cloud the judgement on what is an extremely important issue.
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Uninteresting to you maybe, but obviously not to a few million other people.
>Therefore, the only things that are newsworthy are big genuine mistakes (£10 is not big)..
I've been reading a few blog entries about this from across the whole of the political spectrum and I can't recall a single comment that complained about the £10 although a few reacted with disbelief that she'd also claimed 80p for a bathplug. Even Polly Toynbee in The Gruinaud has handed back her govt. cheerleader uniform and is lamenting that the behaviour of some MPs is now damaging the reputation of the "good" ones.
The actual amount is actually irrelevant to most people and no-one I know believes this was a mistake.
>and cases of deliberate fraud (the one fact missing from this story and your list)
It is not the media's job, nor mine, to establish whether is was "deliberate fraud".
>Rubbish like this story serves only to muddy the waters and cloud the judgement on what is an extremely
>important issue.
If this were an isolated incident I would agree with you but the media coverage is very relevant in that it highlights yet another case of MPs feathering their nests with taxpayer's money. It is establishing a pattern of behaviour.
Without the public outrage caused by this drip, drip, drip of "mistakes" there would be no incentive for Westminster to clean up their act. That is why this "small genuine mistake" is newsworthy.
It is also an added bonus to see this pompous creature who is doing her utmost to destroy every other citizen's personal privacy and civil liberties held up for public ridicule :-)
Kevin...
PS. I wonder if her XJ is armoured?
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I've known people paid that sort of money or more who while they might be geniuses in their chosen speciality find the mundane and ordinary to be a bit beyond their capabilities.
But thats his job, GJD, thats what he's paid £40k a year by us to do... and thats why it should be correct...
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"if a few quid on the part of an MP's spouse is the best the press can come up with,"
It wasn't "the best the press can come up with". It was just the most comical and embarrassing and, as The Times said "the last straw". To most of us it appears rather strange that a Minister of State can claim that a "back bedroom" in her sister's house is her "main residence" and the large house in Redditch where her husband and children live is her "secondary residence.
Most of us can claim some expenses which are directly to do with the carrying out of our jobs. Can you claim for 2 washing machines (to wash your work shirts in); a couple of digital TVs (to check road conditions before you set off for work?), a sink plug (makes washing/shaving easier (you wouldn't want to be scruffy at work now would you?) ; claim for a second residence when you live about 10 miles from your work place (commuting is so wearisome isn't it?) etc, etc (To the tune of about £300,000 a year in the case of Balls and Cooper - who both claim the housing allowance despite being married and living together). Ironically, their secondary residence is in London where their children live.
No, it's not "the best the press can come up with", it's just an illustration of the lengths our "Right Honourable (!!) ladies and gentlemen" will go to to squeeze every last drop from a very loosely formulated expenses system which they themselves approved - and don't start me on their pensions.
As a motoring link, it is interesting to note that the MP for Darwen managed to claim enough mileage for her journey to and from Darwen to take place for every day that Parliament sat in the year. How she claimed in addition another £3000 for rail fares and another £2500 for air fares to a from her constituency is a mystery. Perhaps she nips back to Lancashire for lunch?? Yet she apparently lives with her partner in his Lewisham constituency!
It's all a far cry from my wife who, as an art teacher in a school where the allowance for all art materials for each pupil is less than £1 per year subsidises basic material needs without being able to claim any money back because the school has no money.
Sorry, rather a long rant.
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I was taken in by our MPs awarding themselves modest pay rises for years - very reasonable, I thought.
Little did I know their plan was to spunk it all up on expenses.
Including travel expenses, if you want a weak motoring link. :)
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spunk it all up
Eh? Read this dictionary of slang. www.peevish.co.uk/slang/s.htm
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