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Whether Jacqui Smith spends four whole nights a week or only three at her Nunhead residence is a matter for Parliamentary scrutiny. What fascinates and concerns me is that her own neighbours exposed her nightly comings and goings to the public.
What a busy life Dominic and Jessica Taplin must lead in their south London street. Based on sightings of her police protection, they concluded that the Home Secretary spent fewer than four nights each week at her sister's terraced house -which would make it her main residence.
How utterly creepy. In modern London the last thing you expect to find next door is a curtain twitcher. Don't the Taplins realise that this is the capital of anonymity, the city in which it's fine to wear pyjamas to the corner shop and a neon bandage dress and Ugg boots to go to work?
It's possible that the Taplins simply objected to sharing their street with a Labour Minister. After all, they took their suspicions straight to the Conservatives - hardly the first place most of us would consider heading.
In being busybodies, the Taplins have missed a fundamental point about life in London. It's liberating to live in precisely because of its discretion, its total indifference to our quirks and foibles. Friends assure me that it's perfectly OK to date five men at once here. Have an affair if you want to - you'll never get caught. Londoners might step over you when you faint in the street but they also let you go about your personal life. Which is why a lot of us from outside choose to live here.
That's not to say that a certain amount of neighbourly attention isn't welcome. In my street we have a mutual interest in repelling burglars, door-to-door con-men and the odd Jehovah's Witness. Likewise, we can be called upon to feed each other's cats.
Compared with the tenacious Taplins, my own surveillance efforts are paltry. It took a pink Babygro fluttering on the washing line before I realised that a newborn girl had arrived next door. Could I tell you how many nights her parents spend elsewhere in an average week? Not without swapping paid employment to become a full-time spy.
The Taplins' behaviour is worrying for the rest of us. While we live in such close proximity a bit of privacy is essential, and turning a blind eye is one of London's unspoken laws. Let's keep it that way. Snooping is so provincial.
Reader views (5)
I think it IS in the public interest when the Home Secretary is ripping us off. Ms. Ross - you've got it wrong. The neighbours don't need to look too far beyond the security personnel encamped outside her sister's door to note whether JS is in "residence" or not.
This is yet another example of the greed of the self-serving members of this discredited, incompetent and diddling government who are all now just feathering their own nests in readiness for when they rightly get booted out. Mrs. Smith is way, way out her depth and is an utter disgrace.
As the great and late Terry-Thomas would have said - they are an "absolute shower" !
- Charlie, Nr. Crackpot, North Yorkshire, 23/02/2009 14:29
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She either lodges with her sister and pays rent or is bankrolling the whole residence at the taxpayers' expense. It might be time for the Inland Revenue to look into both of their tax affairs. If she didn't actually break any rules, she certainly is sailing very close to the wind. It appears that anyone who spends any length of time sucking on the teat of the public purse has a enormous sense of entitlement and absolutely no shame whatsoever. Those hugely expensive new offices built in Westminster with our money should have included 600-odd modest bedsits so they wouldn't be able to get away with this
- Lmd, London, 21/02/2009 21:44
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But the minister is ripping us all off.
She may be sticking to the rules, but who wrote the rules? Anyone who presented expense claims lie this to a private company would be sacked
- Ian, London Eng, 20/02/2009 15:14
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Wearing your jimmies to the corner shop is not what this is all about. Many. many people in this country now do not have a job. Thousands have lost their homes. Thousands do not even have enough money for a dinner. Yet Jacqui Smith can rake in thousands claiming for second home expenses when it is questionable whether she stays there.
- Albert Hall, hove england, 20/02/2009 13:58
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"Which is why a lot of us from outside choose to live here." - it shows..
- Bob, London, 20/02/2009 12:18
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