DAILY STAR
GUIDO FAWKES: PLOTS, RUMOURS AND CONSPIRACY
The total bill for Cameron’s tinkering? A cool quarter of a million.
ANNUAL expenses claims made by MPs have just been released and Guido has been crunching the numbers. Last year we paid them £89million on top of their salaries, with the sum soaring by 25% on the previous year. This included £3.6million in staff payments for the 150 members who still think it’s acceptable to put their wives, children and even siblings on the payroll. Reforms to the system after the expenses scandal of 2009 controversially still allow this practice to continue. Sheffield MP Meg Munn not only employs her husband but his sister as well. Talk about keeping it in the family.
DIEHARD socialist Dennis Skinner pays his younger American girlfriend Lois Blasenheim £35,000 a year out of the public purse, which means they have a combinedhousehold income over £100,000 when you add in his £65,000 salary. The 80-year-old “Beast of Bolsover” fails to mention that when he’s ranting about fighting the rich!
LAST week, Guido quoted Labour bruiser John Mann attacking the return to Government of David Laws. Mann agreed that the new Lib Dem junior Education Minister paying his boyfriend rent out of the public purse was immoral. What the rent-a-gob doesn’t shout about is that we pay his wife Joanna Mann some £30,000 from public funds.
THE Prime Minister rejigged his team last week, holding his first proper Government reshuffle. Armed with a bottle of wine and a box of Kleenex to wipe their eyes, Dave cleared out nearly 30 ministers. He’s feeling the backlash this weekend, especially as he softened the blow for favourite old boys with knighthoods and gave outgoing ladiesno honours. Don’t feel too sorry for them, though…departing Cabinet ministers get a tidy £17,207 in severance pay, while junior ministers have to make do with a cheeky £5,924. The total bill for Cameron’s tinkering? A cool quarter of a million.
FOR some reason Nick Clegg agreed to lose all his Lib Dem representation in the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence. With tensions between Israel and Iran growing, this will make it much easier for the famously pacifist party to avoid responsibility for British involvement in any conflict or for endorsing renewing our Trident nuclear deterrent. Clegg did get an extra minister covering environment. Guido’s sure he wasn’t calculating the benefits of Government-funded cars for them to visit the countryside, where the Lib Dems have lots of seats which need to be visited before the next election.
FANS of BBC1’s Sunday Politics may be a little disappointed when Andrew Neil’s showreturns this month. Sadly, sexy journalist and part-time Labour councillor Rowenna Davis will no longer be seen on the show. Westminster is full of people with faces for radio but she will be replaced on the panel by the Guardian’s chief political correspondent, the equally pretty Nick Watt.
WHEN Ed Miliband was running against his brother David for the leadership of the Labour Party, we were told “Ed speaks human”. Last week he gave a big speech promoting his big new idea of “predistribution”. Guido is not sure exactly what it means. Presumably “predistribution” is like when you legally divide up your parents’ multi-million-pound house into three parts so that when you inherit the North Londonhome in Primrose Hill you avoid hefty inheritance taxes. Which is exactly what Ed and David Miliband did.
RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has been focusing on the big global issues of late. He mused in an interview with state broadcaster Russia Today: “Some fans of group sex say that it’s better than one-on-one because, as with any collective work, you can skive off.” It sounds like he’s been taking advice from 75-year-old former Italian PM Silvio “bunga-bunga” Berlusconi.
LAST week, Guido quoted Labour bruiser John Mann attacking the return to Government of David Laws. Mann agreed that the new Lib Dem junior Education Minister paying his boyfriend rent out of the public purse was immoral. What the rent-a-gob doesn’t shout about is that we pay his wife Joanna Mann some £30,000 from public funds.
THE Prime Minister rejigged his team last week, holding his first proper Government reshuffle. Armed with a bottle of wine and a box of Kleenex to wipe their eyes, Dave cleared out nearly 30 ministers. He’s feeling the backlash this weekend, especially as he softened the blow for favourite old boys with knighthoods and gave outgoing ladiesno honours. Don’t feel too sorry for them, though…departing Cabinet ministers get a tidy £17,207 in severance pay, while junior ministers have to make do with a cheeky £5,924. The total bill for Cameron’s tinkering? A cool quarter of a million.
FOR some reason Nick Clegg agreed to lose all his Lib Dem representation in the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence. With tensions between Israel and Iran growing, this will make it much easier for the famously pacifist party to avoid responsibility for British involvement in any conflict or for endorsing renewing our Trident nuclear deterrent. Clegg did get an extra minister covering environment. Guido’s sure he wasn’t calculating the benefits of Government-funded cars for them to visit the countryside, where the Lib Dems have lots of seats which need to be visited before the next election.
FANS of BBC1’s Sunday Politics may be a little disappointed when Andrew Neil’s showreturns this month. Sadly, sexy journalist and part-time Labour councillor Rowenna Davis will no longer be seen on the show. Westminster is full of people with faces for radio but she will be replaced on the panel by the Guardian’s chief political correspondent, the equally pretty Nick Watt.
WHEN Ed Miliband was running against his brother David for the leadership of the Labour Party, we were told “Ed speaks human”. Last week he gave a big speech promoting his big new idea of “predistribution”. Guido is not sure exactly what it means. Presumably “predistribution” is like when you legally divide up your parents’ multi-million-pound house into three parts so that when you inherit the North Londonhome in Primrose Hill you avoid hefty inheritance taxes. Which is exactly what Ed and David Miliband did.
RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has been focusing on the big global issues of late. He mused in an interview with state broadcaster Russia Today: “Some fans of group sex say that it’s better than one-on-one because, as with any collective work, you can skive off.” It sounds like he’s been taking advice from 75-year-old former Italian PM Silvio “bunga-bunga” Berlusconi.
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