Jackboot Jacqui... our 'Second Home' Secretary
Last updated at 7:58 AM on 10th February 2009
To the editor of the Redditch Bugle:
Sir, I write in connection with the disgusting campaign of vilification
against our marvellous MP Jacqui Smith.
It is being suggested in some quarters that Ms Smith has acted
improperly in claiming that her main home is not, in fact, in her
constituency with her husband and children, but is the spare bedroom of
her sister's house in South London.
Further, it is alleged falsely that this perfectly legitimate
arrangement is merely a device to maximise the amount Ms Smith can claim
in parliamentary living allowances.
This is a vile calumny against a dedicated public servant, who
selflessly spends as many as three nights a week away from the bosom of
her family, fighting crime and international terrorism.
In claiming her proper, modest allowance, she has broken no rules -
unlike her Conservative opposite number, who has been involved in a
criminal conspiracy to bribe a civil servant to leak classified
information for no purpose other than to embarrass the Home Secretary.
The good people of Redditch will not be taken in by this politically
motivated distraction, which is clearly designed to undermine a
selfless, upstanding member of a Labour government leading the world's
recovery from a global credit crunch, which began in America.
It only serves to prove once again why Ms Smith was absolutely correct
to vote against the publication of MPs' expenses.
I remain, yours impartially, Richard Timney, c/o John Lewis Furniture
Department, Redditch.
This letter hasn't actually appeared yet, but don't be surprised when it
does. Richard Timney is Jacqui Smith's husband and was recently
discovered to be bombarding their local paper with letters praising his
wife and attacking the Conservatives.
He didn't reveal in any of this correspondence that he was actually
married to Jackboot Jacqui, or that he is paid £40,000 a year by the
taxpayer to be her adviser.
Given that he didn't think it relevant to declare an interest, it's
hardly surprising that his wife thinks there's nothing wrong in
pretending her main home is her sister's spare room.
She has nominated her family home in Redditch as her 'second' address,
allowing her to claim £116,000 in allowances to which she otherwise
would not be entitled.
Whatever the rules say, this is bent on every level. Just because the
system is rotten to the core, it doesn't mean MPs are compelled to take
full advantage.
Parliamentary living allowances seem to be based on the flexible
principle laid down by Marvin Gaye: Wherever I lay my hat, that's my
home.
There's no consistency. Ministers Ed Balls and his wife Yvette Cooper,
both members for Yorkshire constituencies, claim their main home is in
London, where their children go to school, which lets them rake in
maximum 'double bubble' expenses.
Jacqui Smith's children go to school in Redditch. Yet she insists her
'main' home is her sister's spare bedroom, south of the water.
No wonder she has consistently opposed reforming the way in which
parliamentary allowances are paid and has fought toothand-nail to
prevent them being made public.
Since she became an MP in 2001, Miss Smith has proved adept at playing
the exes game, always claiming up to the max. So far she's pocketed a
total of £782,000. It's a racket which puts Fleet Street's 'old Spanish
practices' to shame.
The Tories are equally guilty, which is why there has been muted outrage
from the Opposition benches at the latest scandal. In the Westminster
glasshouse, no one is queueing up to throw stones.
We've become wearily accustomed to MPs lining their own pockets and
exempting themselves from the laws which apply to the rest of us. No
wonder Jackboots doesn't think she's doing anything wrong, especially
when we learn that the Prime Minister even claims for light bulbs.
As Peter Oborne pointed out yesterday-had she been a civil servant or a
travelling salesman caught fiddling her exes, she'd have been sent to
prison for fraud. But there's another appalling aspect to all this,
which doesn't have anything to do with the legality or otherwise of her
expenses claims. It's to do with dignity and propriety.
She's even got a police protection squad on the doorstep. So we end up
with the unedifying spectacle of our Home Secretary living like a
supergrass in a witness protection safe house, just so she can bump up
her expenses.
Can you imagine an earlier, more distinguished holder of this office,
Sir Robert Peel, for instance, shacked up in a box room in Streatham,
simply to trouser a few shillings from the public purse?
The trouble is, as I have remarked before, these New Labour types think
they own the system. Propriety? Dignity of office? Forget it.
We were even treated yesterday to Yvette Cooper-Balls haughtily
lecturing us about the 'moral irresponsibility' of bankers, while
filling her own pretty little pixie boots from the bottomless trough of
parliamentary allowances.
Like Jackboot Jacqui, she doesn't know the meaning of the word
'morality'.
While the rest of us have to cut our cloth to cope with a credit crunch
substantially of this government's creation, the politicians top up
their pension funds with our money and fiddle their expenses forms with
criminal abandon - none more so than our 'Second Home' Secretary.
Arctic weather brings out monster paw prints
As Britain faces another week of Arctic weather (that'll be the global
warming), a set of monster paw prints has been found in the snow at
Binbrook Airfield, in Lincolnshire.
The Mail reported that they stretched for more than 200ft along a
windswept track before vanishing into thick undergrowth.
Rambler Adrian Campbell, 57, who found them, said: 'I couldn't believe
my eyes.
'And they went on for ages. I don't want to come face to face with
whatever creature is at the end of the trail.'
The footprints were five inches long and had three feet spaces between
them, far too large to have been made by a domestic cat or dog.
Could be a polar bear.
For heaven's sake, not again
Last week, it was Christian nurse Caroline Petrie suspended for offering
to pray for an elderly patient. Thankfully, that wicked decision has now
been overturned.
Now a foster mother has been struck off because a Muslim girl in her
charge decided to convert to Christianity.
Even though the woman, who has fostered more than 80 children, is a
practising Anglican, she says she put no pressure on the girl, who is 16
and well capable of making up her own mind.
Social workers say she had a duty to preserve the girl's religion. Why?
You can bet your Bible they wouldn't have objected if the girl was a
Christian who had converted to Islam.
They say they had to protect her because converting from Islam is a
capital offence in some Muslim countries. But we don't live in an
Islamic country - not yet, anyway.
The foster mum has lost her income and been forced to sell her farm in
the North of England. No one can be identified for 'legal reasons'
designed to protect the social workers involved.
And so another decent, loving Christian is sacrificed on the altar of
'diversity'.
Don't fly with me
This week's edition of Do As I Say, Not As I Do comes from Gordon
Brown's 'environment tsar'.
Lord Turner wants the Government to place strict limits on how many
plane journeys we can take each year.
So that's the real reason ministers are talking about setting up a
database to keep track of every time we leave the country.
But at the same time, it has been revealed that last year Whitehall
spent more than £18.5million on first class and business class air
tickets for ministers and civil servants.
When it comes to air travel, politicians are right up there with actress
Emma Thompson, who after attending the protest against Heathrow's third
runway, promptly boarded a first class flight for Los Angeles to attend
the Golden Globes. Clearly, constraint is only for the 'little people'.
Grabbing you by the balls
After being forced to close four of his six restaurants because the
banks refused to extend his overdraft, chef Antony Worrall Thompson
adapts an old adage.
'If you owe a couple of hundred thousand like we did, they have got you
by the balls. You owe them £10million and you have them by the balls.'
Up to a point, Lord Wozza. That doesn't hold entirely true, any more -
as Gordon Brown is discovering in his vain attempts to get the bankers
he has bailed out with our money to show restraint over bonus payments.
What he's discovered is that even if the banks owe you £37billion,
they've still got you by the balls.
Http://www.dailymai
Jackboot-Jacqui-
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Tuesday, 10 February 2009
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