Dodgy Git Of The Day...er, Week

Once again, finding a suitable candidate has been a tricky task. Last time we did Dodgy Git of the Week - or indeed, Dodgy Git of the Day as it then was - the problem was that there was such an abundance of dodginess and such a plethora of gits we just couldn't narrow it down to one person, so we gave the award to the entire British Parliament.

Today, it seems the problem relates to some American pop star or another who last made a decent record in the 1980s. Whoever it was, apparently they've gone and died so the newspapers are full of that - and no doubt the Government will be using it as a golden opportunity to announce martial law or the enforced closure of the Daily Telegraph or something along those lines - which has resulted in British politics being rather overlooked for the first time in months.

However, our politicians won't ever let us down and of course we can always rely on at least one of them to do something suitably dodgy and gitesque. Thankyou Ann Keen, Labour MP for Brentford and Isleworth, you stepped up to the challenge.

Now. Mrs. Keen is, as we all know, married to fellow MP Alan Keen and they have a house in Brentford, just ten miles from Westminster. But hey - that's far enough for them to have a second home closer to Parliament at the tax-payers' expense, so you can bet your bottom pound sterling that they made sure they got one. Trouble is, they then forgot to live in the main residence - which they have to pay for - for seven months, and now the local council want to take it away from them and use it for some worthwhile purpose. That seems pretty damn dodgy in its own right, but why is Ann getting the Dodgy Git award all to herself?

A few years back, in 2005, one of Ann's staff members injured themself at work which resulted in spell of absence from the job. When they returned, it was decided that they would need to complete an occupational health assessment. The staff member decided he or she would like this done privately, since they had private medical insurance. There was still a £150 contribution to be paid, however, and although £150 isn't a great deal of money in the big scheme of things nobody would want to pay it if there was a way to avoid doing so. But good old Ann, with her rather juicy MP's salary, stepped up to the mark and paid it for her loyal employee.

Such altruism! Such charity! How on Earth can Acid Rabbi possibly see such noble actions as deserving a Dodgy Git Award, you may be thinking? Well, this is Ann Keen, remember, one half of the notorious scam duo...sorry, married couple who claimed nearly £138,000 for a second home and then let their main one go to waste, even though as London residents they're surely familiar with the sight of people sleeping on the cold, wet streets. So what did she do? Obvious. Like we say, nobody wants to be £150 down if there's a way to avoid it, and for Ann there was a way - she just submitted an expenses claim and we paid for it instead! £150 for private medicine which, though a tiny amount, could have gone to the cash-starved National Health Service that the vast majority of us have to make do with.

Well done, Mrs. Keen. You are a fine example!

Dodgy Git Of The Day

Once again, narrowing down today's Dodgy Git contenders to one single winner seemed an impossible task - there's just so many Dodgy Gits in UK politics right now.

Could it be Margaret Moran, who hasn't paid back a single penny of the £22,500 she claimed to treat the dry rot at her Southampton second home, a hundred miles from her Luton constituency? Could it even be the big man himself, Gordon Brown, for trying to gain our sympathy when he said the last few weeks have been the worst of his life? Or maybe either Elliot Morley or David Chaytor, the two highest-profile MPs to have "accidentally" benefitted when they overclaimed on the mortgages? We could even have chosen Ahmadinejad because although he's not a member of the British Parliament this is our blog and we can do what the hell we like with it.

So many people. In the end we decided it was in fact impossible and nearly decided to change the Dodgy Git of the Day Award to Dodgy Git of the Week so we wouldn't have to worry about it until next Friday. But then a thought hit us - MPs have been hard at work proposing a new spreadsheet that, in their opinion, should in future be used to publish expenses claims and which would prevent us from seeing the receipts they submit along with refused claims. The answer was staring us in the face - they're all Dodgy Gits!

So here you go - a nice .png trophy for each and every one of you!

Oh, and by the way - we've decided this will be weekly only from now on, so remember to log on on Friday at about 5 if you particularly care.

Dodgy Git Of The Day

From now until...er...whenever we forget (probably tomorrow) we're going to have a new daily feature here on the blog. Once 5pm comes round, we'll take a look back over the day's news and decide on who has shown themselves to be the Dodgiest Git of the Day. Entrants will be expected to show extreme deviousness in the pursuit of personal gain, outstanding chicanery in escaping the blame or just good old-fashioned all-round dodginess; so you can rest assured that this section of the blog is going to become the place to look if you want some hot tips on which politicians are in with a good chance of ending up as leader of their party.

With the expenses details freshly published on the Parliament website - so fresh, in fact, that if you leave your browser on the page for more than a few minutes you'll see that the gallons and gallons of redaction ink is not yet dry and will drip off the page, eventually surrounding you and your computer in a big, black puddle - Grade A Dodgy Gits are easier to find than John Prescott in an room full of catwalk models right now but one man has risen above all others. Alistair Darling, the MP who serves as Chancellor of the Exchequer despite the fact that he was tragically born part badger, has shown himself to be possessed of nothing but true Dodgy professionalism by requesting his accountants to alter the wording on an invoice for tax advice before he submitted it as part of an expenses claim. Under Commons rules, MPs are not elegible to claim for personal tax advice. But that didn't stop the little Darling, oh no! He simply got accountancy firm Chiene Tait to revise the document so that it now stated that it was for advice "in connection with your duties as a Member of Parliament." What a star!

He looks absolutely delighted, doesn't he? Acid Rabbi seeks only to bring joy.
Image adapted from one at Wikipedia. Original by Antonio Cruz. Used in accordance with Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Brazil license.

Mr. Darling, you're our first Dodgy Git of The Day, and may we have the pleasure of saying that no matter how many people we give the award to in the future, you will undoubtedly always be one of the dodgiest of them all!