+++ New MP’s Scam Breaking +++

Poll Shows Strength of Public Backlash - Times
G20 Anagram Special - Idle
Either Politicians Go Straight Or We Give them the Boot - Maguire
Margaret Beckett’s Three Homes on the State - Evening Standard
HSBC Gets Record £12.5 Billion Issue Away - FT
Update from the CEO of UK plc - John Redwood
Gordon’s Trillion Unravels to $100 Billion - FT
Lefties Feel Threatened by the Internet - Dan Hannan
Lessons of the Hannan Viral Sensation - The Economist
Jacqui Hits All-Time Polling Low - PoliticsHome
Palace Snub for Jacqui Smith - Evening Standard
New Advert Targets Smith Over Expenses - Guardian

TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2009

+++ New MP’s Scam Breaking +++

Guido is digging into a whole new seam of scams that have come to his notice. MPs are renting buy-to-let properties that they own to members of  their own staff to whom they authorise payments out of their parliamentary expenses.   Laundering their expenses via their staff back into their own pockets.

Like a Victorian mill owner paying his tenanted workers in their own coin to pay back in rent and spend in their tied shops.  Except MPs use our money…

+++ Developing +++

Oaten : Journalists Knew for Years

Disgraced LibDem MP Mark Oaten tells the Press Gazette that the News of the Screws had known of his activities for three years but had chosen to wait until he was better known to report his use of rent-boys. He claims:

“They had my story for three years I think, but hung on to it and never did anything with it. They could have made that public interest argument at any point in the three years. I had always been a Member of Parliament, but they waited until it could sell most newspapers, at the point at which I became well-known and at my most famous…. What annoys me is when they essentially expose people’s private lives and pretend they’re doing society a great service.”

In response to Oaten’s claims, a News of the World spokesman said: “The allegations were proven true… Mr Oaten is correct that we are indeed in the business of selling papers, however we chose not to print details of his grubby activities on the front page of a family newspaper… With that in mind, perhaps it is the married MP who paid rent boys for kinky sex who should consider a more ‘upfront and honest’ approach.”

The question which arises in Guido’s mind is that if as Mark Oaten’s reckons the Screws had known about his rent-boy frolics for three-years, doesn’t that contradict his original excuses?  He claimed that it was the sudden onset of male pattern baldness that unbalanced him.  Sudden?   Journalists knew for over three years?

Hat-tip : Pink News