Monday, 18 January 2010

Fallen Saint Teather

It is a truth universally acknowledged that while Lib Dems pretend to be saints, whiter than white and above board, they are in fact dirty cheating leeches on the political process. Whether it be their by-election smears, expenses fancy footwork, believe that Vince Cable is actually a force to be reckoned with, or just the constant pushing of the "we matter" idea to voters who should really know better, TB is sick to the teeth of them. One of the more pious and irritating Liberal Democrat MPs has to be Sarah Teather so it was with great pleasure that TB read of her extremely dodgy office rent situation over at his favourite guilty  pleasure-read lefty gossip-monger 
Political Scrapbook
. Hold on isn't Sarah Teather, the
expenses "saint"
? Surely not...

Could the expenses "saint" please explain why she has been subletting her constituency office to the local Lib Dem's to use a campaign centre, despite very clear rules against this. Despite the fact that she claims to have a joint tenancy and thus everything is ok, perhaps Ms. Teather could please explain why the local Lib Dems paid absoulutly no rent on the building for five years?! The smoking gun is
here
.

John Lyon, the Parliamentary Standards commissioner has already said he will investigate this matter. Great scoop for PS, bad news for Teather.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

pwned.

OldSlaughter
said...

I have said before TB and it perhaps bears repeating. Pick on people worth picking on.

This is as unedifying as child abuse. Like knocking the kids for endless 6s in the father/son game.

I am surprised when you join the Lib Dems you don't get issued orange badges for your parking.

Romsey Rapid said...

TB, this may be a wider problem with those sanctimonious Lib Dem 'saints'.
Sandra Gidley, MP for Romsey and Southampton North has spent over £400,000 on office rent, leases and staffing during a four year period.
The Lib Dem party who share the office have spent about £20,000 and only £2k of that was for rent. WTF!!

Shamik
said...

"they are in fact dirty cheating leeches"

Love the pun! Absolutely brilliant!

John Leech
claimed £349.99 for a television and £548 for another television two years later.

Conand
said...

I'll never forget that before Expenses-gate really broke Guido reported that LD MPs were on average the most expensive.

titty watcher said...

nice titties though

Political Scrapbook
said...

@OldSlaughter

With regard to your comment that TB should "pick on people worth picking on", the fact is that the Liberal Democrats have got away scot free on expenses.

On the whole, they've avoided the worst excesses on second homes but they have run a whole range of other scams which leverage benefits of incumbency to the hilt, launder taxpayers money into party coffers and created opaque, unauditable "black box" vehicles that hide levels and sources of donations.

"Duck houses" and "moat cleaning" make for easier copy for journalists but the media have been remiss in not going after the Lib Dems on this.

OldSlaughter
said...

Political Scrapbook.

Of course they got off easy. Nobody could be bothered to indict them.

They are not substantial enough to even generate the requisite levels of hate to sell the newspapers.

The most quality press the Lib Dems currently receive is on this site.

Chris
said...

Romsey Rapid and Political Scrapbook are so right. The Lib Dems launder public money into their party coffers - but it's too technical to make good copy so the newspapers don't go there. We have to give the outer London MPs like Teather, Davey, Cable etc some credit for having the political nous not to claim ACA when they live 30 minutes from Westminster (ludicrous that they were even entitled to it) - but they make up for it on the office fiddles.
A couple of instances I came across were Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) who bought a £15,000 mass mailing machine and charged half to the taxpayer. There is no way the machine is used 50/50 for constituency work and political campaigning - but aside from the useage it's wrong to claim half the capital cost because if the Lib Dems lose the seat there is no way the taxpayers half (i.e. the right to use the machine for constituency annual reports) will be passed on to the next MP.
Julia Goldsworthy (Falmouth and Cambourne) rents her office, which is also shared with the local Lib Dems, from a property development company owned by her agent and his wife. A very cosy arrangement!
Someone should pull all this together and try to make it easily understandable because it's grossly unfair that Lib Dems are regarded as saintly when in many ways their abuse is more sinister for being so covert.

Tory Bear
said...

can you email me some details please chris?

editor@torybear.com

Anonymous said...

You ask for some details from Chris TB.

Just look at the Hampshire Lib Dem MPs - all four claimed for stuffing machines - almost impossible to prove what they are used for - but it's too much of a coincidence!

Anonymous said...

..... and also Teather was dubbed "stilletto queen" by Quentin Letts in the Mail, along with the self-styled Romseyredhead, Sandra Gidley!
Romsey Rapid's touched on it above. Her office expenses are being looked at by Lyon too!
Looks like getting rid of Charley K wasn't the only thing they collaborated on!

Hang 'em all said...

What's happened to the Political Scrapbook site? Fallen over due to too many TB readers following the link, or closed down by the LibDems' lawyers?

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