Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

The foremost Conservative critic of UCUNF (sorry Jeff) has been Sir Nicholas Winterton who is rather more enamoured with the DUP . The MP for Macclesfield is renowned as one of the Tories’ few remaining unreformed neanderthals who will leave politics after the next election with the toe of David Cameron’s shoe in his backside. True to form he’s not going quietly . Winterton previously confounded popular opinion, and good sense, by insisting that MPs should not have to declare their interests at Westminster. Now he’s whinging about travel expenses because he doesn’t want to sit in a standard railway carriage (as opposed to first class) with a “totally different type of people”. The interview with Stephen Nolan is half way down the page, on the right, and it is spectacularly bad!

The report which Sir Christopher Kelly’s Committee on Standards in Public Life published on MPs’ expenses and allowances on Wednesday, as yet, only comprises recommendations. Nick Robinson, on his blog , has set out the likely process for its implementation, during which MPs might, he contends, attempt to ‘smooth off the sharpest edges’ of the proposed reforms. The committee has advised that a mandatory end to double jobbing in Northern Ireland should be imposed in time for the 2011 Assembly election, although it is prepared to contemplate postponement until 2015. Sixteen of our eighteen MPs are also MLAs, whilst Alex Salmond retains the solitary dual mandate outside Northern Ireland. It is unlikely that strong opposition will emerge to this particular Kelly proposal. Which makes the dilemma for Northern Irish parties, and in particular the DUP, all the more interesting. Its leader recently indicated that he was likely to abandon a hastily formulated commitment to end double job...

The Committee on Standards in Public Life has finally published its report on MPs’ expenses and allowances. The BBC has a PDF of the full ‘Kelly Report’ and a useful synopsis for the impatient or time restricted reader. Some of its recommendations will send a chill up the collective spines of Northern Ireland’s MPs, particularly those within the DUP. It is worth remembering that the conduct which the report recommends is best practice which MPs should have abided by in the first instance. Recommendation 40: The practice of permitting a Westminster MP simultaneously to sit in a devolved legislature should be brought to an end, ideally by the time of the elections to the three devolved legislatures scheduled for May 2011. Which is augmented by the following observations in the introduction, 16 out of 18 Northern Ireland Westminster MPs are also members of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Five of them currently hold ministerial positions there. The only other example of dual mandates i...

On Slugger Mick has already pointed readers towards the Guardian’s resource for MPs’ expenses. The idea is that the public will investigate the various newly released documents for themselves and the newspaper will collate the information on its website. As I have to sift through financial information all day long as a day job, I will not be participating in the national audit, but I shall be keeping an eye on the documents that appear for these nine reprobates in particular. I gather that Iris has a special predilection for Laura Ashley.

Sir Nicholas Winterton, the Conservative backbencher, gained notoriety by defending the right of MPs to retain undeclared interests in conjunction with their political work. Unsurprisingly, in the current climate, he has decided to stand down at the next election; a decision which will no doubt cause his party leader little enough distress. Winterton, you’ll remember, addressed an audience of DUP members back in January, criticising the UUP-Conservative pact for undermining ‘unionist unity’. With his attitude to expenses, it is easy to see how he could be drawn towards a party containing the Swish Family Robinson. The fewer sitting MPs of Winterton’s ilk that seek re-election, the better it is for the reputation of the House of Commons. And with his ally, Peter Robinson, also likely to step down from Westminster at the next election, at least two of the most notorious snouts could have been withdrawn from the trough.

You’ve got to admire Peter Robinson’s audacity. Sorry, strike that, start again. You’ve got to deplore Peter Robinson’s mendacity. After the DUP declared itself confident that it had nothing to fear when the Daily Telegraph investigation touched upon its expenses, the First Minister has defended £30,525 (thirty thousand five hundred and twenty five pounds only) claimed for food bills, submitted over a period of four years by he and his wife. Peter claims that this equates to an average of about £73 per week. How did he arrive at this estimate? Three Thousand Versts has investigated, and can exclusively reveal that if one divides £30,525 by four (the number of years which the claims cover), then fifty two (the number of weeks in the year, for slower readers) and then further divides the resultant figure by two (for the number of Swish Robinsons in the House of Commons) one arrives at the princely sum of £73.38. It’s good to know that Robbo went to such extravagant lengths to acc...

Yesterday Nick Robinson summated the Commons’ expenses debacle with salience and brevity, by announcing that the notion of the ‘honourable member’ is dead. Ironically, the man charged with upholding propriety within the chamber, Speaker Michael Martin, chose to launch an extraordinary, barely penetrable attack against one of the members whose honour and dignity remain intact, Kate Hoey. Rarely can the Guardian’s sketch writer, Simon Hoggart, have been presented with more apposite material. This morning he has gratefully transcribed Martin’s venomous assault on Hoey, as well as providing a sardonic synopsis of what the speaker’s initial statement should have consisted of. Martin, as Hoggart suggests, has presided over the expenses’ fiasco, for which he should assume a large degree of responsibility. And as lamentable as his defensive response to the Daily Telegraph’s revelations might have been, his retort to the MP for Vauxhall, who suggested that the Metropolitan Police has mor...

A statement from Harriet Harman contains detail of measures through which the Prime Minister intends to give the system of expenses for MPs some running repairs, pending a more thorough renovation. The most striking proposal would scrap the controversial second homes’ allowance and replace it with a simpler overnight allowance linked to attendance at the House of Commons. Which is a sensible and necessary expedient. But, as Pete Baker on Slugger and Jonathan Isaby on ConHome have already noted, it may not apply to Northern Irish MPs. A passage of the statement reads, “H. We will ask the Committee on Standards in Public Life to look at the circumstances applying in Northern Ireland before final application of the flat rate allowance for MPs representing Northern Ireland.” One circumstance, which conspicuously applies in Northern Ireland, is that 5 Members of Parliament, elected by the province’s voters, refuse to take their seats. Sinn Féin’s abstentionism, shamefully, does not p...

I was rather preoccupied, last night, with cradling my head in my hands, gritting my teeth and rocking back and forth in despair. Therefore I did not inspect, until this morning, the contents of a press release issued on behalf of Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, Owen Paterson. Although I am coming rather late to the story, and it is being discussed elsewhere, it is nevertheless worth a brief mention. The meat of Paterson’s statement is as follows: “Should the Conservatives win a majority at the next election, one of their first priorities would be to restore the integrity of Parliament. I think that it is inconceivable that incoming Conservative MPs would vote to continue paying millions of pounds of public money to elected members who do not take their seats.” I believe this represents reiteration of current policy rather than anything brand new, but it deserves to be restated given the controversy about MPs expenses and in particular revelations that Sinn Féin is claiming half...

Even Jacqui Smith had enough decency to appear chastened on this morning’s Today programme, as she attempted to explain away her expense claims. Though clearly she still believes her worst sin is failing to account for a tenner invested in blue movies, rather than spending the nation's taxes on furniture for her family's house. Gordon Brown may be taking a second home allowance, despite being housed in the most famous residence in the country, courtesy of the public purse, but at least he has made some placatory noises about scrapping the payment which he currently pockets. This contrite mood has clearly not yet reached Northern Ireland, where the First Minister reacted to suggestions that his family are receiving extraordinary quantities of taxpayers’ cash, with an aggressive rant which targeted the Conservative and Ulster Unionist parties. Naturally Tory and UUP representatives were quick to deny disseminating a story that was carried, over the weekend, in two of the mos...

Much attention in Northern Ireland has focused on the degree to which Sinn Féin representatives have had their snouts stuck in the Westminster trough, despite their ‘principled’ abstention from Parliament. Justifiably so. Though Shinner expense claims hardly reveal anything we could not otherwise reasonably have deduced. Republicans’ objection to British sovereignty in Ireland has rarely impeded a sense of entitlement to squeeze every Great British pound from the hated Exchequer. Not that DUP attitudes are strikingly dissimilar, albeit that their starting point is somewhat different. The overweening sense of entitlement is still a defining characteristic. Hence the Daily Mail’s report that Robinsons Iris and Peter are costing the taxpayer almost £600,000 per year. The double, triple, quadruple jobbery of Democratic Unionist politicians is well worn territory. Clearly the people of Northern Ireland are getting short-changed by their representatives, particularly at Westminster...