Tories to revitalise economy

David Cameron outlines Conservative proposals aimed at "revitalising" the British economy: "A little birdy tells me that Greece is on the rock'n'roll. So wot I'm suggestin' is me, Gorgeous George, Hatchet Hague, Boris the Blade and anovver few lads wait outside the IMF and when they come out, we duff 'em over their 'eads and scarper wiv the cash. Oh - and call me Dodgy Dave from now on, alright?"

The Axeman cometh...

"Tory proposals may result in delicate operations being performed by a crazed axeman rather than by a doctor," warn experts.

Osborne the Axeman

Torquemosborne! Chancellor announces £6.2 BILLION spending cuts. If you think THAT'S gonna hurt, just wait until he puts down his scalpel and starts with his axe

Osborne possibly faces possible reprimand, possibly

The name Julie Brighouse probably means nothing to you. We'd never heard of her until now either. All we really need to say about her is that she lived with her partner for seven months in a house near Tamworth - the trouble is, she was claiming housing benefit and income support during that time and "forgot" to let the benefits agency know she was not living alone. As a result, she was paid £5,329.89 to which she was not entitled.

Ms. Brighouse got caught, and was accused of benefits fraud. Once found guilty, she had to pay back the full sum along with costs amounting to £725 and was also required to complete 100 hours of community service.

You have almost certainly heard of George Osborne, because he's the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, the MP for Tatton in Cheshire and a man who has been the target of more than one article here - we maintain a particular loathing for him as one of Cameron's cronies and make no claims otherwise. Your man Ozzy finds himself standing outside the headmaster's office this morning because Parliamentary Standards Commissioner John Lyon says that he shouldn't have stated the mortgage on his constituency home - which he had declared to be his second home, thus making himself able to claim the mortgage payments on his expenses bill even though the second home allowance is actually supposed to be for MPs to buy a home in London so they can attend debates in the Commons (more about Ozzy's mortgage-related shenanigans here) - was £450,000 when it was, in fact, £445,000.

Citizens of Tatton! Want to see your MP picking the dog eggs off the grass and fishing the Special Brew cans out of the lake in your local park? We thought you might - we would too, even though doing so would mean travelling considerably further north than we're generally comfortable doing (even after immunisation shots). However - you can't. That's because George Osborne is one of the Special People and doesn't get punished for fraud like us common folk.

Five grand doesn't sound a vast amount of cash when we're talking about the price of a grotty council flat off half a million quid. But as Councillor Robert Pritchard of Tamworth Borough Council said following the prosecution of Ms. Brighouse, it's "a considerable amount of money which should have gone to someone who really needed it." As in, not to somebody who has a fortune of over £4 million and stands to inherit both the Baronetcy of Ballentaylor and a tasty share of his dad's profitable interior decor business. In other words, not somebody like George Osborne. With a salary of at least £64,766 he could in all probability be said to be in a position to pay his own chauffeur fees and still have change to buy a couple of DVDs of a speech given by himself, rather amusingly on the subject of value for taxpayer's money.

Now, never let it be said that Acid Rabbi treats people unfairly (even though such an allegation is undoubtedly true). In Ozzy's defence, we'll mention the fact that John Lyon has accepted the MP's claims that everything he claimed he claimed in good faith, having quite rightly sought advice from Commons authorities. We'll accept that - Lyon doesn't seem the sort of chap who will fall for any old bullshit to us. We do wonder, however, if those authorities standard reply to any question that boils (with very little heat) down to "can I rip off the British electorate please?" is: "Hey, why not? Go ahead, and sod the proles!"

Despite all that, Lyon believes that Osborne has not been entirely honest in his claims and, later today, George will hear whether or not he is going to face any sort of reprimand. One thing that seems certain is that he will be required to pay something back, something said by the BBC to be a "relatively small amount of money." Not the full amount plus costs then, like Julie Brighouse? It seems safe to assume you won't be able to see Osborne picking up litter and removing graffiti in any Cheshire parks while doing community service, either. Pity, really - I'd take a few dogs down there the night before and get them to do what dogs do best.

Ms. Brighouse may be a benefits cheat, but we think her punishment was sufficient and we're sure she's very sorry. She really doesn't need to have the obvious fact that MPs are not subject to the same laws to which the rest of us must comply rammed down her throat too.

George Osborne faces inquiry

George Osborne, the Conservative MP for Tatton who is currently caught up in a row resulting from his claim that the Government refused him permission to see information related to spending, is facing an inquiry into irregularities amongst his expenses submissions. Previous accusations made by the Daily Telegraph, which claimed that Mr. Osborne had deliberately avoided paying Capital Gains Tax, will not be investigated.

George Osborne says that he is "relaxed" about the investigation.
Image adapted from one by M. Holland at Wikipedia, used in accordance with Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license.

The Parliamentary Standards Commissioner will look into claims made by the chairman of Mr. Osborne's constituency Labour party chairman, Laurie Burton, that the MP wrongly designated a property that - going by Commons rules - should have been desiganted his main residence as his official second home. Those actions, already discussed on this blog, allowed Mr. Osborne to personally benefit to the tune of £748,000.

Mr. Burton also alleges that Mr. Osborne claimed to cover the cost of mortgage expenses which were, he says, "not necessarily incurred" - virtually a direct accusation of deceit. The MP became a figure of fun shortly after the Commons published details of expenses claims, which revealed that he had claimed £47 to pay for two CDs of a speech given by himself on the topic of "value for money."

That Mr. Osborne "flipped" the designation of his home for the purpose of personal financial gain seems unarguable. That may not have been strictly against the rules - though the second home allowance is intended to cover the cost of a home closer to Parliament than the MP's constituency home, there has in the past been no regulation stating that the second property need be anywhere near Westminster, only that the MP should spend less time there than at the main home - it seems obvious that he did abuse the system to satisfy his own greed, as have many others. Had any of the £749,000 been paid into the public purse, things would be very different; but thus far Mr. Osborne has paid back just £1195.49, including what the Conservatives' website calls "the cost of a particularly expensive car journey" - a £440 trip in a taxi, late one night. As a result, we can only hope that Mr. Osborne will find himself subject to the strictest punishment the Commissioner can use should he be found guilty.

In the meantime, David Cameron is so keen on being seen to be doing more in response to the expenses scandal than Gordon Brown, it would come as no surprise whatsoever were Mr. Osborne to be forced out of the Shadow Chancellor's office - even if only temporarily and until proven innocent - by the beginning of next week. We'll just have to wait and see.

The Big Fight

George Osborne claimed yesterday that he had been prevented by the Government from seeing the Combined Online Information System database containing details on spending in 12,000 key areas. Shadow Chancellor Osborne says that he made two requests to examine the database but was denied permission on both occasions.

Lord Mandelson has now stepped in, saying that Mr. Osborne must withdraw what he calls a "very serious allegation" which he states is untrue.

FIGHT!

One man is going to be exposed as a liar, but who will it be? Both have a dubious record. "Uppercut" Osborne has been caught up in the expenses row after it emerged that he had repeatedly "flipped" his designated second home, netting himself a cool £748,000 in the process. Meanwhile, "Mangler" Mandelson (we thought about calling him "Marquess of Queensbury" Mandelson, but he has plenty of titles already) has twice been forced to resign after allegations of shifty goings-on and was also caught up in the notorious Deripaska Affair.

TWO MEN, ONE FIGHT. TWO LIARS, ONE WINNER. THE FIGHT OF THE YEAR.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner

The winner of the Most Ridiculous Expense Claim Competition has just been announced. A big hand please for the MP in second place...

Jeremy Hunt.

Mr. Hunt submitted a claim for 1p to cover the cost of a 12-second telephone call.

But here's the one you've all been waiting for - in first place, winning derision from the British Electorate for ever more, iiiiiitttttttt's (drum roll)...

George Osborne.

Mr. Osborne claimed £47 to pay for two DVDs of a speech given by himself. The title of the speech? Value For Tax-Payer's Money. The man is truly a professional.

George Osborne wins the title of "Most Ridiculous Expenses Claimant 2009!"
Image from Wikipedia, attributed to Mholland, used in accordance with Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License.

Well done, Mr. Osborne!

George Osborne MP flips out over £748k

George Osborne, pictured right, bought his Cheshire farmhouse ten months prior to being elected as Conservative MP for Tatton in 2001 - a seat he has held ever since. He also owned a property purchased for £700,000 in London, where his wife and he had lived since the late '90s, which is his main residence.

Land Registry records show that by June 2000, the mortgage on the London house was £150,000. He then re-mortgaged it less than half a year later for £620,299, some of which went to pay for the Cheshire property. Then, once he was elected he swapped designations (or "flipped" them, to use the term chosen by the press) declaring the Cheshire house to be his main residence. That allowed him to claim expenses to cover mortgage interest on the London property. With us so far? We don't doubt it - we don't assume you're all idiots like UKIP do.

Two years later, he took out another mortgage on the house in Cheshire and declared that it was now his second home - which then allowed him to claim expenses covering the costs on that one. It's thought that he's had around £100,000 so far, and it also conveniently allowed him to dramatically reduce the loan on the London place to £199,875.

Good God, man. You may be a bit of a whizz with the figures what with you being Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and all, but that's just showing off. All in all, he's come very close to the maximum permitted limit that MPs can claim for second homes; but, he claims, at no time did he break the rules and has enjoyed no personal gain as a result of the changes in designation. He also says the Commons’ Fees Office actually advised him to designate the London address as his second home.

Finally, the London house was sold in 2006, netting Osborne a tasty £748,000 profit.

However, David Cameron has banned his MPs from "flipping" homes in this way as he tries his very hardest to make his party look as though they are morally superior to Labour and says that it is not good enough for any Conservative party member to simply claim that they have followed the rules - quite rightly, he now expects them to have a little bit of common human decency too; though few of us are under any illusion that this would ever have been the case had the press not got their teeth into the expenses claims in the first place.

Mr. Osborne's actions have been "entirely reasonable as all the costs are associated with his need to have a second home in Cheshire, and his arrangements have always sought to minimise the interest costs to the taxpayer," says a spokeman for the MP. If that's the case, why didn't you choose a small, cheaper property? There's plenty of other MPs who manage perfectly well with flats instead of farmhouses. Those that don't move their whole family into them, at any rate.

Mr. Osborne is going to be facing some questions, it seems; assuming his party's leader is being sincere when he says that Tory MPs must be beyond reproach. If he can't answer them, there's only one way Mr. Cameron can prove he means what he says - Osborne will have to go.