MOONLIGHTING MOCKERY

Recent comments by the Father of the House regarding MPs' salaries were quite rightly scorned.  Out of touch Tory Peter Bottomley said he couldn't understand how younger MPs managed to survive on their salaries.  Just to be clear - all MPs receive a basic £82,000 plus perks and expenses, more than double the £31,000 average salary in the UK.  They also get free housing near their place of work, in addition to their existing home.  Must be really tough for them, eh?

Now imagine you're paid that handsome sum.  If you've got a conscience you'd make sure you did your level best to make sure you earned it, and yet so many of our MPs manage to somehow moonlight in plain sight.  There's Dehenna Davidson, the young Tory MP for Bishop Auckland - on Sunday mornings she can be found on GB News hosting The Political Correction alongside Nigel Farage.  There's Labour's David Lammy who, despite also being a member of Starmer's Shadow Cabinet, has managed to write two books and host a weekly phone-in show on LBC Radio.  And worst of all is Dan 'Two Jobs' Jarvis - who despite being elected as the Mayor of South Yorkshire in 2018 with a salary of £79,000 - sought successful re-election in the general election as MP for Barnsley Central.  That's a combined salary of more than £160,000, plus expenses!

Among the more quirky second jobs that our 'struggling' MPs engage in is that of Cardiff West's Kevin Brennan.  The Labour MP has found time to embark on a music career and will shortly release his debut album...

It's no great surprise that both Brennan and Lammy have also been implicated in expense scandals.  Despite being a London MP, Lammy claimed expenses for a second home and in 2011 he was Britain's most expensive MP, claiming just shy of £174,000 in expenses alone.  Brennan used his second home allowances to claim for a £450 widescreen TV, but it was actually delivered to his Cardiff home.  When confronted about this, the MP flat out lied.

These people aren't broke, they aren't struggling.  They're milking the system and that means they're milking you, the taxpayer.  With comfy majorities they're neglecting their primary duties in search of yet more wealth.  They are nothing short of parasites.

A BIT RICH, RAYNER

In an interview with Andrew Marr on Sunday, Angela Rayner was typically self-righteous in her condemnation of the PM's costly refurb.  The public deserved answers "because it's taxpayers' money" exclaimed Rayner.

Somehow she managed to passionately argue her case with a straight face and no sense of shame.  It has been less than two months since her own obscene abuse of the taxpayer came to light.  On top of £1,600 worth of first class train tickets, she blew more than two thousand pounds on top of the range Apple tech and accessories.  It's a wonder that Marr didn't bring that up.

Click below for the clip.

Further reading

Starmer's Pigs At The Trough

Angela's Apple Excesses

Rayner Quizzed Over Airpods

RAYNER QUIZZED OVER AIRPODS

Angela Rayner faced awkward questions when she appeared on Good Morning Britain last week.  Having assumed the moral high ground over NHS pay, she probably thought she would get an easy ride on the increasingly woke show.  As Rayner prattled on about the government wasting money, presenter Kate Garraway interjected and raised the issue of expenses, which pre-pandemic were costing the taxpayer over a hundred million pounds each year.  Specifically, Garraway wanted to talk airpods.

Click below for the clip.

Neither Garraway or Rayner made any mention of the fact that the £249 airpod headphones were personalised, but co-presenter Ben Shepherd wasn't going to let it slip.  In responding to his point about her obvious excesses Rayner declared: "Anyone who's got Apple devices will know that if you don't buy the Apple accessories then it won't support it on the devices".  Unfortunately this didn't wash with Shepherd and Garraway, who knew that cheaper headphones do work on Apple devices and can be picked up for less than a tenner.

Rayner also argued that Health Secretary Matt Hancock had 'done exactly the same' (as if this made it OK), but Shepherd pointed out that Hancock's headphones cost £159.  His were also top of the range, but they were not personalised like Rayner's.

Instead of billing the taxpayer for hundreds of pounds for excessive personalised goods, why couldn't Ange have just bought a cheaper version using her £80,000 basic salary?  She argues that she's done nothing wrong as she hasn't broken any rules - which is true - but morally her expenses claims are reprehensible.  

Click below for Rayner's humiliation.

Like her front bench colleague Anneliese Dodds, note for this interview Rayner had received a big makeover, with permed locks and a ton of slap on her face.  How are these pro-lockdown MPs getting such dramatic makeovers when hair salons are closed?  It's a valid question, but then as we saw over the weekend these MPs are becoming more and more selective when it comes to lockdown.  Anti-lockdown protesters and football fans are 'Covidiot' scum and nothing is said about police brutality in those circumstances, but feminists and BLM have a right to protest!

ANGELA'S APPLE EXCESSES

More expense revelations have emerged about Labour's most virtuous cheerleader for the downtrodden - Angela Rayner.  While Starmer's deputy likes to talk the talk when it comes to the disadvantaged, she doesn't walk their walk.  In this month's expense returns we discover that she blew £249 on a pair of personalised Apple Airpod earphones.  Now Apple no longer supply a pair of standard earphones with their iPhones, so Rayner could argue that she needed a pair so she could conduct telephone business on those first class train journeys she also bills the taxpayer for.  However, instead of picking up a pair online for about a tenner, once again Angela decided that it was nothing but the best for her - at taxpayers' expense, naturally.

In addition to her £249 earphones, Rayner also purchased a £99 case for her £1,619 iPad Pro - again both billed to the taxpayer.  A £131 wireless Apple Pencil also appeared in her expenses as did a £199 Apple keyboard.  That's more than two grand on software and accessories at a time when millions of Brits are facing unemployment, including many of her own constituents.  Shameful.

Further reading

Starmer's Pigs At The Trough

STARMER'S PIGS AT THE TROUGH

The Sun's exposé of Labour frontbench expenses has been a huge embarrassment to the likes of Lisa Nandy, Jon Ashworth and co, but none more so than the holier-than-thou self-appointed defender of the downtrodden - Angela Rayner.  Apparently, standard fare is not good enough for the sanctimonious one and she has blown a whopping £1,600 on 23 first class train tickets since the beginning of the pandemic.  That's almost £70 a ticket.  The taxpayer will foot the bill for an eye watering £30,952.98 in total expense claims made by Rayner during the past year.

Her colleague Lisa Nandy has somehow managed to find even more expensive tickets, blowing £1,800 on just 13 journeys - again first class.  That's £138 a pop, despite the fact Nandy represents a seat just down the road from Rayner's.  Nandy also billed the taxpayer for a TV licence for her office, as well as hand sanitiser and council tax.  Her total claims amount to £23,083.44.

Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth claimed for a total of 23,865.67, including £72 on taxi fares between his second home and Westminster.

Business spokeswoman Lucy Powell claimed a total of 25,206.49, including £390 worth of first class train travel.

Women and equality spokeswoman Gill Furniss claimed a total of 19,506.31, including yet more first class train travel.

"Standard class is good enough for most people", John O'Connell of the Taxpayers' Alliance told The Sun.  Indeed, and if these parasites continue to feed at this rate, anger will surely grow as ordinary people begin to pay a heavy price for this never-ending lockdown lunacy.