Tonight:
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With Ann Widdecombe heading to retirement, I feared that the long line of occasionally brave and often batty Tory battleaxes looked to be at an end.
I shouldn't have worried. Nadine Dorries, MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, is coming along nicely. After taking on the supporters of abortion last month, she tore into the "Left-wing" BBC this week for its "frenzied attacks" on Conservative MPs and MEPs. "The more terminal the position looks for Labour, the more desperate the BBC and Left-wing press become," she thundered, and must be made to pay for their insolence.
"The incoming Conservative government has many big dragons to slay. The BBC has to be the biggest."
The BBC had not allowed the liberal bias of some of its broadcasters to run riot. Nor had it libelled Conservatives with malicious and demonstrably false accusations. There was no smear and no McCarthyite witch-hunt, as Dorries went on to allege.
All it had done was report, quite accurately, that Caroline Spelman, the Tory Party chairwoman, got the public to pay for her nanny, and that the Conservative MEP, Giles Chichester, had funnelled £400,000 of European taxpayers' funding into a family company.
If employees outside Westminster were to do the same, they would be lucky if the finance director didn't fire them on the spot. They can't order taxpayers to pick up the cost of hiring their partners or child minders. Nor, to go down the list of other recent scandals, can they demand that the Treasury pay for vacation jobs for their undergraduate children, John Lewis kitchens, flats in central London, window cleaners, landscape gardeners, groceries, Sky Sports subscriptions, home repairs and light bulbs.
Dorries poses as the voice of the woman in the street. That she cannot see the gulf between the ordinary world of work and the extraordinary Westminster village is further confirmation that the political class does not understand the trouble it is in.
So let me spell it out for her: the freeloading looks like theft. That the rules in Westminster and Brussels are so broadly drawn and so feebly enforced that freeloading is not technically theft in no way makes the behaviour of politicians more palatable.
If Dorries thinks the attacks are "frenzied" now, I must warn her that she ain't seen nothing yet.
With inflation rising and a recession looming, the frenzy will grow. Voters will realise that while they cut back on food, childcare and home improvements, their taxes will ensure that MPs continue to live as if the economy were still booming.
It may seem small-minded to complain - MPs' expenses are an infinitesimally small part of public spending - but it is not wholly petty. For if politicians can avoid feeling even a small part of the spreading economic sickness, how can they be expected to remedy it?
Reader views (3)
Never mind attacks or otherwise on any individual of whatever party persausion exactly what do mp's spend their quite adequate wages on? It seems their entire living expenses and lavish consumerism are entirely funded on 'expenses.'
- Jean Halls, bedford, england, 10/05/2009 08:59
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Nick, don't you realise that Nadine Dorries is simply pointing out that the BBC is being partial. We've not heard a peep from them about Michael Cashman's payments to his partner (over £750,000 in total), nor of Tony Blair's re-mortgaging of his constituency house (cost £30,000 - re-mortgaged for £300,000 with interest charges recoverable as a parliamentary expense). On the other hand, Caroline Spelman was the top item on BBC news broadcasts, web and text sites over the entire weekend. WHY?
- Mike Isaacs, London NW, 11/06/2008 22:12
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The attack by the BBC on Caroline Spelman was astonishing, it was the main item on all radio and tv news, all this over a pretty minor infringement (and wouldn't it be a good idea if companies could pay for childcare) over 10 years ago. (You forgot to mention that Nick) compared to the monstrous gravy train that is the EU (So corrupt they haven't had their accounts approved independently for 10 years).
- Chris Milburn, Tonbridge, England, 11/06/2008 13:39
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