Dark Lord Mandelson faces op

Peter Mandelson, the man whose career would not die, has been admitted to hospital for an operation to remedy what is said to be a "benign condition of the prostate."

Get well soon, Lord Peter!
(adapted from an original image at Wikipedia, used in accordance with Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license)

Hopefully, none of our readers were expecting us to be nasty about this - seriously, what do you take us for? We've not been too kind to him on this blog (and we still won't be, because he's a nasty, slimy, self-serving little git) but hey - the man's ill. We'd feel bad if something went wrong, and we wished Mrs. Thatcher well when she broke her arm recently - Mandelson's pretty harmless in comparison. It'd be horrible if the anaesthetist messed up or something.

Benign growth of the prostate is very common amongst men of Archimandrite Mandelson's age (55), but treatment is not always necessary (especially if you're working class and don't have private medical insurance, we should think, both of which are unlikely to apply in this case), and symptoms - such as difficulty passing urine - are usually mild.

While the surgeon's poking about up there, perhaps he could have a quick look up the man's jacksie too? We realise this will be a highly unpleasant task but it seems difficulty in passing urine isn't the only problem he's been having, because he's brimful of shit too.

Bercow's Cash Cow

John Bercow seemed an honest sort of gent for a Tory when he was elected as Parliamentary Speaker - he promised a new start and said that he would personify a "clean break" in the wake of Michael Martin's resignation following the expenses scandal.

John Bercow has a lot to smile about, it seems. Is he going to line his own pockets, just like his predecessor?

Image from Wikipedia, used in accordance with Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license.

Mr. Martin famously claimed around £724,600 in public money to pay for the upkeep of the Speaker's residence, a grace-and-favour apartment upon which the occupant pays no rent, along with another £992,000 to improve the garden and security. £1,716,600 - not bad, eh? That could do a lot of good for an entire housing estate, never mind one apartment - it must be absolutely gorgeous in there after all that and now that Bercow's the speaker he gets to live there. Wonder what he thinks of it?

He thinks it's a "fantastic apartment but it's not altogether child friendly," apparently. Of course, none of us would ever wish to see any harm come to the Bercow offspring - but the £20,659.36 he's claiming just a month and a half since his appointment (22nd June 2009) to carry out further improvements seems a little excessive. Especially when you remember he gets paid the same amount as a Cabinet minister - £141,647 - and, as we've already pointed out, doesn't pay rent on the place. We can't help but wonder if just maybe he ought to pay for his own £6,764.30 sofa, £90.95 mattresses and sheets, £760 window seat cushions and £275 lampshades; none of which are strictly speaking essential in making a home child friendly - in fact, he'd be a lot better off getting the cheapest sofa possible, since he'll need to replace it in a year or so once the little darlings have drawn on it with felt-tip pens, smeared melted chocolate biscuits over it and done all of the other horrible things that kiddies do to furniture. Let's not forget the £80 clock, £86.73 noticeboard and £620 television aerial socket with Sky box he's claiming for either.

That would leave him with a cool £132,970.02 so he could probably have afford the £3600 he spent on window locks (this apartment must have a lot of windows), £47.88 on a hob guard, £3380 on planters to improve terrace safety and £1087 on changing a study into a playroom too. Like I say, nobody in their right mind wants to see any child come to harm; but most of don't get paid anything like that sort of money, but if we want to make our homes safer for our children we have to pay for it ourselves. And he'd still have £124,855.14 left over - quite a bit in excess of the average British annual income, which is around £24,908, only £1300.17 (about the same as a month's rent for many of those who have to pay for their accomodation) more than what Mr. Bercow is paid every two months.

According to a Commons spokesperson, Mr. Bercow says that he is "happy that this information is in the public domain, that the public know how this money has been spent." Will he be surprised if the public don't seem favourable?

Berlusconi is only human

The Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose recent affair with an 18-year-old model has wrecked his marriage but hardly had any effect whatsoever on the electorate's opinions of him, has commented on the fling and what newspapers claim are recordings of telephone conversations he had with prostitutes.

Berlusconi: "I am not a saint." Maybe Brown and co. could learn a thing or two?
Image from Wikipedia, used in accordance with Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 Brazil license.

"There are tons of good-looking girls out there. I am not a saint," he says. The general consensus in Italy seems to be: "You old goat, you!"

Perhaps if our own politicians confessed to being merely human who are as open to temptation as the rest of us rather than believing that they ought to provide some sort of honourable and entirely unnecessary example to us common folk, we might not judge them quite so harshly when their failings are revealed to us. After all, how many of us can genuinely say that, were we in a position whereby we could have a second home and £400 a month to spend on food at the tax-payer's expense, we would not do the same? Personally, I'd have been bathing in Krug and feeding my cat Beluga (only he probably wouldn't eat it, since he seems to prefer fruitcake to the fishy foods typically enjoyed by the feline community).

BNP beats up man outside pub?

Here's an interesting story. The BBC report that David Drew, the MP for Stroud, says that British National Party supporters gave a man "one hell of a hiding" after spilled beer on party leader Nick Griffin.

Nick Griffin - with some beer. We hope that it was only St***a Ar***s that was thrown over him - we'd hate to think of nice beer being wasted on a neo-Nazi.
Image from Wikipedia, used in accordance with Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 license.

According to Deputy Leader Simon Darby, Mr. Griffin and guests were having a meal in the pub when an unnamed man spilled beer on him. Both Mr. Drew and Mr. Darby agree that there was an altercation in the pub and the man was asked to leave by the landlord, but at this point the stories differ. Mr. Drew says that the man was then taken out of the pub and beaten up by the holocaust denier's supporters, while Mr. Darby says that the man then lay in wait outside where he threw the beer over Mr. Griffin, at which point he was "restrained by our [the BNP's] security because he had a glass in his hand..." Mr. Drew is "trying to distort and warp the situation," he claims, adding that the party "have yet to decide whether to report it to the police." Notice the difference in the two stories over when the beer was spilled - was it in the pub, resulting in the man being ejected, or outside the pub as Mr. Darby claims? Was beer spilled twice, and if so why hasn't Mr. Darby emphasised this, if only to make his version of events watertight?

Hmm. Definitely worth keeping an eye on. Mr. Griffin is always, when in public, accompanied by group of rather large and tough-looking men: "I am not prepared to accept that any politician has a private army," Mr. Darby says. Bodyguards are one thing - even we would agree that Mr. Griffin - who is most certainly more likely to be attacked or even killed than most of us - has the right to exist, even if we do hate everything that he and his party stand for; but if it is shown that they really did give the man "a hiding" rather than merely restrained him to prevent injury, it shoots rather a noticeable hole in their claims to be a legitimate, democratic party.

There is no mention of whether or not the unnamed man is also considering pressing charges. If he does, however, it may well be the case that he has witnesses. If he does and the BNP do not, it will be very hard to believe Mr. Darby's claims. Like we say - worth keeping an eye on.

Exclusive: Mandelson has reconstructive surgery

The Archimandrite Mandelson, leader of the Starveling Cult and probable Most Evil Man in the Universe (Darth Vader lists him as a reference on his curriculum vitae and claims he was "the bestest teacher what I ever had" on Rate My Teachers.com), is already known for his chilling appearance and bloodthirsty ways. Some years ago he famously had his genetic code altered so that his eyes became a terrifying red colour; he has also had his skin lightened and is believed to have had a number of changes carried out to his genitals, allowing him to inject any combination of an assortment of different chemicals - including truth serum - into his partners.

As if all that isn't freaky enough, a recent photograph appears to show that the First Secretary of State - who is widely said to have been the architect of New Labour - has had further surgery in order to radically redesign his hands so that each finger is now tipped with a smaller, fully-functioning hand of its own. This leaves him with a total of 40 fingers and ten thumbs.

Don't worry - we're not going to make you look at a photo of his genitals.

News has come in today revealing that Lord Mandelson is a member of around 35 separate Cabinet committees that have been created in order to cover matters related to economic, domestic and foreign policies. There are 44 committees in total, of which Prime Minister Gordon Brown is a member of fewer than Mandelson, leading Conservative MPs to criticise what they term the unelected minister's "powerbase." "It is obvious that Peter Mandelson is the real unelected prime minister pulling the strings at No 10," says a Tory party spokesman.

Acid Rabbi nipped down to Westminster where he was lucky enough to bump into one of the Lord's many under-secretaries who, once we'd finished with the thumb-screws, was happy to act as an unofficial spokesman as long as we guaranteed anonymity since he was afraid his boss would punish him. "It's no secret now that Lord Peter sits on almost all Parliamentary committees," he told us. "He's involved in all sorts of things from those that discuss Africa to the Olympics to immigration. Basically, once he reached ten of them he found he was spreading himself a bit thinly, so he's had the reconstructive surgery on his hands so that he can keep a finger in 42 pies simultaneously."

Acid Rabbi - undoubtedly the finest investigative journalism on the Internet.
Yarmulkes off to Iain M. Banks, who we hope won't be offended at us nicking his ideas and adapting the cover of The Algebraist (having some idea of his politics, we suspect he won't).

Grayling: Take yobs' mobile phones

Shadow Home Secretary and MP for Epsom and Ewell Chris Grayling proposes giving police the power to confiscate and keep for one month mobile phones belonging to vandals and others who behave in an anti-social manner. The move is just one part of a whole selection of new powers the Conservatives want to give the police, following the realisation that ASBOs have little positive effect in society.

Take yobs' mobile phones? Most people are more worried about their knives.
Image from Wikipedia, used in accordance with Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license.

This will, he says, "go to the heart of what matters to a Nokia generation of young people" and serve to disrupt gang activity and make a point to those committing offences of this type.

Have you ever heard such a load of rubbish in your entire life? Yobs who have just had their phone taken away are going to do one thing - go straight out and get a new one. It costs £20 for a brand new Nokia 2610 in Argos - you'd only have to do one mugging to afford one of them and you'd still have change for a portion of chips on the way home, just to make sure you've got something to tell your grandchildren about in the future. Then you just meet up with one of your crew members, spend five minutes copying the numbers for all yo' bredren (you're not getting Bluetooth for twenty quid) and you is proper back in business bruv.

"In areas where there is a genuine gang culture, such a step could also give police an additional tool to disrupt gang activity," says Mr. Grayling, who also suggests that juvenile offenders have their bicycles taken away. So, if you live in London or anywhere else that suffers from a high level of petty crime, expect to get your bike nicked twice a day instead of twice a week as soon as the Tories are in power.

Nice work if you can get it...

Jim Hood (pictured right, in an image that rather reminds us of Godzilla attacking Tokyo), the Labour MP for Lanark and Hamilton East, has another job outside the Commons of which many of us would be envious - because it pays him money even when he doesn't do any work.

Mr. Hood receives a £7500 per annum retainer from Scottish Coal to act as its Parliamentary Advisor, which is paid to him in monthly installments. Under new rules, MPs must declare all money earned from second jobs, rather than just in £5000 increments as was previously the case. The MP's latest declaration reveals that he worked "nil hours" for one installment.

That's £625 for doing bugger all. Not a massive amount of money, all things considered, but like we say - nice work if you can get it.

Jacqui Smith knew of husband's porn viewing habits

Former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who stepped down from the Government earlier this year, has admitted that she knew her husband watched pornographic films before the scandal that arose after the press discovered that she had put in an expenses claim for two examples he watched on pay-per-view television.

Now, we're not going to go into a discussion over whether or not porn is OK - there are several convincing arguments both in favour and against from writers of both sexes, a fair percentage of whom would describe themselves as feminists.

Jacqui Smith is the former Home Secretary. Is she a former feminist too? Recent comments and actions seem to suggest so.
Copyright-free image from Wikipedia.

What interests us is that when asked by the Guardian if she had ever watched porn with him, Ms. Smith replied: "No, no, no. In fact, I would argue with him. I would say to him I think porn is wrong because of my feminist background."

Is this the same Jacqui Smith who, when she was asked in an interview with Elle magazine if women "should be worried about we drink?" replied: "We know that the excessive consumption of alcohol by young people can cause real harm to their health, but we also need to consider the impact it has on women's personal safety - one in three rapes occur after the victim has been drinking." That sounds rather as though she feels that rape victims are at least partly to blame for their rape - excessive drinking is, as we all know, bad for us but any woman who chooses to get drunk has the right to do so without fear of rape. Drinking is not the cause of rape in any way at all.

Elle was also interviewing author Anna Blundy, who was asked whether she thought that concerns over women drinking were disguised misogyny. "I think there is a horrible misogyny," she said. "In general, it is not women committing crimes when they are drunk - they're more likely to have crims committed against them." Ms. Blundy is quite rightly saying that rapes carried out on drunk women are not the victim's fault, but of the attacker and the society which creates people who feel they are entitled to exert their physical dominance over others. Ms. Smith scores: 0 Feminist Points.

Where would you feel safest at work: in this dark street...
Image by Thomas Claveirole, used in accordance with Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 license.

With her Policing and Crime Bill, Ms. Smith sought to transfer legal blame from prostitutes onto their clients, especially in those cases which involve what the report terms "a prostitute controlled for gain," presumably with the aim of enabling prostitutes to report crime carried out against them to the police without fear of being prosecuted themselves. However, while prostitution remains an illegal activity this is likely to drive it further underground where it will be even further from police scrutiny as the pimps and the johns try harder to escape attention for fear of harsher penalties. There are already thousands of prostitutes in this country - some of them brought here from other nations - who are kept as sex-slaves, never allowed to leave the brothel within which they are imprisoned so that they cannot seek help. The crimes and suffering that these unfortunate human beings must regularly be forced to endure do not bear thinking about. The only way to make prostitution safer for the women and men who sell sex is to stop pretending we can make it go away, stop pretending it doesn't exist and for the trade to be legalised and licensed. If prostitutes worked in licensed brothels, where they would be subject to regular health checks and protected by law and security, the numbers who suffer beatings, murder and disease would be all but wiped out. Ms. Smith's law, though well-intentioned, will only increase suffering and so she scores: 0 Feminist Points.

...or in this clean, licensed, legal brothel where you are protected by both law and large security guards?

The bill also seeks to tighten up legislation on pole-dancing and strip clubs, which have noticeably increased in the last few years (many of the so-called burlesque events, which seem to have become considered almost family entertainment recently, are burlesque in name alone and in actuality little more than strip joints), making it harder for establishments of these types to be created. We can fully understand Ms. Smith's point here - they are thoroughly unpleasant, seedy little places and most of us would far prefer it if they didn't exist. But enough people want them, and so they do. You may be the sort of person who wouldn't dream of walking into such a place or you may be a regular, but either way it is obvious that they are by far the least harmful aspect of the sex trade. The people who work in them are not forced to do so and can leave at any time. To keep hold of their licenses, the proprietors must ensure that all of their performers and customers are over the age of 18. Few people want to be strippers but for those that are the job is an easy, if unpleasant, way to make money which can be abandoned whenever they want or as soon as they've made however much money they need. What happens if we criminalise strip clubs? Precisely the same as happens with criminalised prostitution and drugs or the prohibition of alcohol - it goes underground, where it is run by shady characters far more interested in lining their own pockets than the welfare of their employees. Of course, we are not suggesting that all owners of legal clubs are philanthropic altruists (we rather doubt that any are, in fact), but at least while their activities are out in the open air where we can see what they're getting up to the police and health services can keep check on them. Ms. Smith scores: 0 Feminist Points.

So all in all, we very much doubt that Jacqui Smith can reasonably call herself a feminist at all. While we have no doubt that she is not an Acid Rabbi reader and as such will not defend her statement here, we hope that this post will inspire comments from those that do read it - especially women - and would particularly like to hear feminist support for her and her bill.

With thanks to Feminist Bite which picked up on the Elle interview and published an article on it. It's a fascinating site full of intelligent opinions and arguments that is well worth a click.

Keens win back home

Ann and Alan Keen, the MP couple who have been in the news regularly of late since Hounslow Council contacted them wanting to know why they hadn't lived in the property designated as their official main home for at least seven months and threatening to take possession of it if they didn't come up with some convincing reasons pretty sharpish, have won the legal fight to evict the squatters who moved into the house and hung a massive sign reading "reclaiming your taxes" on the front.


According to Commons rules on claiming expenses, an MP's main home should be the one at which they spend most nights. They are then required to foot the bill for that property, but are free to make claims to cover the costs of a second home nearer Parliament (nine miles away, in the Keens' case) - which is what the Keens have been doing with their £750,000 flat in Westminster, even though it was claimed in court that they had not lived in the Brentford main home since August 2008. Though the couple say that they have lived in the Westminster flat only while renovations are in progress at the main home - reports suggest that no work has taken place there in eight months - Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards John Lyon seems to feel the case is questionable since he has agreed to carry out further investigation.

Guido Fawkes, the king of political bloggers, raises an interesting conundrum. Pointing out that it may be merely a question of semantics, he noticed that during one court exchange only Mr. Keen was named as the Brentford property's owner. This does rather force one to wonder, if that's the case, how it was that Mrs. Keen was then able to claim expenses for the second home since if Mr. Keen is the sole legal owner of the Brentford house the Westminster flat is technically her only home and as such can only be designated her main residence. It certainly seems that she may have at the very least bent the rules somewhat there...unless, of course, there's a third property tucked away somewhere, of which she is the legal owner. You'd have thought that were that the case, we'd know about it by now but then again, when it comes to people of this calibre you never can tell. We'll be keeping a very keen eye out for anything interesting that the Commissioner's investigation may discover.

Griffin acts like an idiot

Maybe it's because of his failure to make enough political allies in the EU Parliament to from a far-right bloc, but BNP leader Nick Griffin isn't usually quite as moronic as he's being today. In an interview with the BBC, he proposed that the EU begins sinking ships carrying prospective illegal immigrants from Africa.

Mr. Griffin says that his party would support the deliberate sinking of boats packed full of poor, often malnourished men, women and children such as this one.

"Throw them a life raft and they can go back to Libya," says the holocaust-denying fascist, who recently became one of two BNP officials voted in as British MEPs, "... the only measure, sooner or later, which is going to stop immigration and stop large numbers of sub-Saharan Africans dying on the way to get over here is to get very tough with those coming over. Frankly, they need to sink several of those boats."

The BBC interviewer, Shirin Wheeler, replied that she didn't think "the EU is in the business of murdering people at sea."

"I didn't say anyone should be murdered at sea - I say boats should be sunk, they can throw them a life raft and they can go back to Libya," Mr. Griffin told her.

So what Mr. Griffin is proposing is that ships full of desperately poor people, many of them weak from malnourishment, some of them women and children, are deliberately sunk. Some of them would obviously die as a result - we don't even need to get started on the environmental cost of deliberately sinking a ship in the Mediterranean, which would release oil and other pollution into one of the Earth's most delicate ecosystems.

This is one of those occasions, rather like the events that led to his conviction for racial hatred, where Mr. Griffin shows his true colours (or colour prejudice) by allowing his thuggish, racist mouth to work more quickly than his weaselish, political brain. Anyone who has fallen for the BNP's lies about how it has changed as a party, is no longer racist and advocates democratic policies that are in Britain's best interests should pay very careful attention. Those of us who have not been taken in can look at his comments as amounting to little more than advocacy of the murder of unarmed civilians and as such use it as yet another reason to hate and oppose both him and all that he represents.

How long before his brain catches up, he realises he's just made another in a long series of BNP cock-ups and starts explaining in some convoluted and contrived way how his words were taken out of context and twisted by the BBC to support their own liberal ideals? Our money is on tomorrow by lunchtime.

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.

Should the Dispatches Box be fitted with a lie detection machine?

We Must Be Heard, a regular poster over on the Sky News discussion boards, asks:

"There is plenty of Ministers being accused of untruths in the House of Conmen. Could this be averted, if the Box that Brown keeps thumping was wired to flash if a lie is told?"

Nice idea. But Acid Rabbi foresees one problem - if the machine was set to sound an alarm or flash every time it detected a porky, it'd use so much electricity we'd need about 50 new nuclear power stations just to keep it running.

Image from UK Parliament's Photstream at Flickr. Used in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic license.

However, we think it's an idea with potential. We suggest that, since "dispatch" can also mean "kill without delay" or "murder: kill intentionally and with premeditation", how about if we had a special hotline and if enough of us rang it - say 51% of the UK population - the PM received a shock of 10 million volts killing him/her instantly? If you did it during a well-attended debate, when the Cabinet are packed onto the front bench, you could probably get most of 'em. That's what we call real Parliamentary reform!

So where's Mandelson got to this week?

Where is Grand Vizier, First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Innovation and Skills, Lord President of the Council, Lord of the Dance, Oh Lordy Trouble So Hard, Probably Future Leader of the Labour Party Lord Lord Lord Mandelson (Respect Me, Bitches) this week? He seems to have vanished.

Not that we miss him, mind.

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!