The Ministry Of Truth

I am angry.
You are up in arms.
He or she is livid.
We are outraged.
You are raging.
They are apoplectic.

I know this because the mass media, like the Inspiral Carpets all those years ago, tells me This Is How It Feels.

I have rarely been so struck by the disparity between, on the one hand, Life and, on the other, The Media’s Reflection Of Life.

If you believe the meeja hors, we are just one balmy May night away from self-combustion, rioting in the streets and the collapse of society into anarchy.

Meanwhile, with the exception of the Minister’s Wife, not one person has actually mentioned Expensesgate to me.

That may be in part because I’ve been scared to leave the house because the smoke from all the burning cars on every corner can really set off my chest.

I did risk going to the supermarket yesterday: I saw no protestors chained to the display of two-for-one offers and heard not a single splenetic outburst about Hazel Blears in the chiller aisles.

And I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but the woman on the checkout till didn’t even incite me to kill as much as one MP – she just wanted to know if I’d brought my own bags.

Perhaps I just shopped at the wrong time…

I went to the local bakery the day before: the nice lady neither uttered the word “moat” once nor tried to begin a discussion about the Additional Costs Allowance or the Communications Allowance.  She didn’t even lob a Molotov cocktail at me as I turned to leave the shop.

It is, of course, bollocks on an epic scale.

As the always excellent Mark Steel puts it:

Can there ever have been a time when so many people were so furious? You can be walking your kids to school and the lollipop lady will say “There you go, dear, now always remember to look both ways before crossing. Unless you’re an MP, in which case you DESERVE to get splattered into mush by a bloody great lorry, the thieving bastards. Have a lovely day at school, dear.”

So the Speaker resigning is hardly likely to change that. News reporters get excited, gasping that this is the most dramatic event since the Battle of Hastings – but most people didn’t even know who Michael Martin was. I doubt whether many people have said: “First it was Jade, then Peter and Jordan and now it’s the Speaker of the Commons – well, they SAY these things come in threes.”

My earliest political memory probably comes from my late grandfather – a committed and active trades unionist – who commented circa 1979 (and then repeated regularly until his death nine years later) that “all politicians were in it for themselves”.  Like him, I have almost no time for party politics and, particularly, for party politicians.

Were he alive today I can’t imagine he would have been remotely surprised to learn that some MPs had been filling their boots for years.  He’d have briefly looked up from behind his racing form newspaper – do they still publish The Handicap Book? – and said, “Told you.”

He may have lacked the eloquence of Mark Steel but my grandfather, too, would have seen through the crocodile tears of Margaret Moran, the affected indignation of Nadine Dorries, and the sheer brazen effrontery of Blears:

What they are aware of is the almost admirable arrogance of the MPs who’ve been caught. Douglas Hogg, for example, seems utterly bemused as to why anyone would object to his expenses claim for cleaning his moat. He looks as if he’s about to splutter: “Because of these shenanigens, I’ve had to lay off three of my archers – are you SATISFIED?”

And they make the most wonderful excuses, such as: “This situation is merely down to a mistake. I claimed for the mortgage payments on my second home because I simply forgot that I already own another house half a mile away. I’m a busy man and in these circumstances the odd bungalow easily slips the mind.” Or: “Although it’s true that I’ve been receiving payments for the last five years for a mortgage that was paid off in 1978, this was in no way due to deceit on my part, as throughout this time I’ve been unaware of who I am.”

The elaborate nature of some of these claims are inspired. You expect the next one to go: “The MP claimed £7,000 for a carpet, and then another £9,000 for the same carpet, saying he’d employed it for nine months as his personal secretary.”  [Steel's column was published before we learnt that floating, ornamental duck houses cost £1,645...]

But in some ways the ones who say sorry are worse. What do they mean – sorry? So they’ve been claiming this money for years, then suddenly they become sorry on the same day their fiddle’s reported in the newspaper, well what a coincidence.

Perhaps this is a result of a strain of dyslexia, in which the sufferer mixes up the word “sorry” with the word “caught”. What they mean to say is: “I’m giving back some of the money because I feel truly, truly caught.”

I’ve had dealings with lots of Parliamentarians over the years: while few have ever been outright rude or incompetent (though I have pretty strong views about a couple of people who have incredibly gone on to attain lofty positions in our unwritten constitution), few have ever shone.

Perhaps the least pleasant was the Labour MP for Manchester Gorton, the Right Honourable Sir Gerald Bernard “Odd Job” Kaufman.

Kaufman – a junior minister in the 1974-9 Wilson and Callaghan administrations, appointed to the Privy Counsel in 1978 and, for nine long years from 1983, first Shadow Home Secretary, then Shadow Foreign Secretary – became the chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee in 1992, in which capacity I had the misfortune to encounter him in the late Nineties.  I will not bore you with the minutiae but his behaviour was shameful.

It therefore came as little surprise to learn that Gezza was fingered by the Torygraph for milking his expenses in precisely the manner of assumed entitlement that does inflame a good degree of anger:

Sir Gerald Kaufman charged the taxpayer £1,851 for a rug he imported from a New York antiques centre and tried to claim £8,865 for a television.

The former environment minister was asked to attend a meeting with officials from the parliamentary fees office to discuss details of another claim relating to £28,834 of work on the kitchen and bathroom at his London flat.

He told them that the work was necessary because he was “living in a slum”, though his second home, off Regent’s Park, is in one of the most fashionable areas of the capital. He was eventually reimbursed for £15,329.

On one occasion he asked a civil servant “why are you querying these expenses?” and on another threatened to make a complaint unless a dispute was settled by noon on the day in question. In one document, an official in the fees office noted that invoices Sir Gerald had submitted took him to “within 6p” of his annual limit. He also claimed £1,262 for a gas bill that was £1,055 in credit.

Between 2001 and 2008 the Manchester Gorton MP, one of the Labour party’s longest-serving members, claimed a total of £115,109 in additional costs allowances on his London flat, which he owns outright. In June 2006, he submitted a claim for three months’ expenses totalling £14,301.60, which included £8,865 for a Bang & Olufsen Beovision 40in LCD television. The maximum amount MPs are allowed to claim for TVs is £750.

On July 7, 2006 the fees office wrote to Sir Gerald to say: “I regret to inform you that this item falls within the not allowable category of luxurious furnishings, and as such has been rejected.”  He was paid £750.

In March 2007 Sir Gerald submitted a claim for £1,461.83 for a “second-hand rug replacing 24-year-old carpet”, with an additional £389.91 for “customs duty on rug”, which was paid. The receipt showed that Sir Gerald bought the rug from the Showplace Antique Centre on West 25th Street in Manhattan for $2,750. The Green Book strictly forbids “antique, luxury or premium grade” furnishings.

Later that year, on Dec 29, Sir Gerald, who was knighted in 2004, submitted an invoice from ABC Carpets in Harrods for £598, which was also paid.

A note of a telephone conversation between Sir Gerald, 78, and an official in the fees office, states that his reasons for claiming £28,834 for home improvements between 2005 and 2007 were: “Old flat, facilities out of date, decrepit, health reasons, update, living in slum.” Sir Gerald added that he had “not carried out any repairs/maintenance for 32 years”.

Sir Gerald was also challenged over regular claims for “odd jobs” which he submitted without receipts at a rate of £245 every month — £5 below the then limit for unreceipted expenses. He replied: “Why are you querying these expenses?”

On May 18, a senior official in the fees office noted details of another conversation about the kitchen and bathroom, saying: “MP believes that I have seen a detailed breakdown of the £12,416.51 claim he has submitted [for that financial year]… MP is becoming agitated and will be making an official complaint against me, if this matter is not resolved by 12 noon today.” When detailed invoices were submitted, they included £575 for undertile heating in the shower room and £2,695 for Bosch and Miele kitchen appliances. Sir Gerald was asked to attend a meeting with officials on the matter and the fees office eventually agreed to pay him £15,329 of the £28,834. Sir Gerald accepted, saying that he wanted to “draw a line under the issue”.

In June last year Sir Gerald submitted a £1,262 claim for his gas bill, covering the period March 2006 to May 2008. The fees office pointed out that his gas account was £1,055.60 in credit, and only agreed to pay £122.46.

A note in the file on July 10, 2008 quotes Sir Gerald as saying: “I received a letter from [official] saying not pay as is credit. I paid £1,252 THIS year so want reimbursing!!!”

The fees office wrote to him on July 14 to say: “You might wish to ask British Gas to repay you the credit.”

Sir Gerald’s claims between 2004 and June 2008 also included £19,200 for food — close to the maximum — and £4,692 for cleaning.

Last night Sir Gerald offered to repay the money for the rug and admitted that his claim for the £8,000 television was “a bit daft”.

He said that his flat had been in need of complete refurbishment because he had “neglected” it over the years and he had overclaimed for the gas bill because he “misunderstood” the invoice.

He said that his odd jobs bill was actually more than £245 a month, so he had claimed close to the limit. His food claim was “appropriate” because his job meant he often had to “spend a lot of money” eating out, he added.

There is clearly something wrong with any politician who has served in the Commons continuously since May 1997 and never found any reason to vote against the Bliar or Arrivederci administrations.  Still, it earned him a knighthood so that – along with the enormous amounts of public money used to feather his nest in readiness for his dotage – undoubtedly made it all worthwhile.

I say this more from a sense of moral superiority than in anger, but it’s time to draw your massive, publicly-funded pension, Gerald, you pompous, “bit daft”, old cunt.

Few people can be genuinely surprised that some MPs have been gilding their lillies, surely?  It’s absolutely wrong, it’s fucking annoying, but seriously – is it really a surprise?

All this guff about revolution and root-and-branch reform is doing nothing for global warming and – in real terms – fuck all is going to change as a result.  It’s going to be a bit more difficult for MPs to trouser cash; there will be a degree of independent oversight over MPs’ expense accounts; and there will be greater transparency.  These are all Good Things, to be sure.

But we’ll still have far too many MPs.  We’ll still have an insane, anti-democratic electoral system.  Our elected representatives will still work in hopelessly outdated conditions in a building wholly unsuited to modern government and more concerned with ceremonial tradition than administrative efficiency.  Backbenchers and Select Committees will still have no real power.  The Whips will still be in charge.

Posh Boy Dave is talking about none of these things when he postures so arrogantly and shouts at Arrivederci about calling a General Election.

Why the rush for an election, PBD?  What would we be voting on?  What new proposals for true reform are you espousing?  If there is an election and a Tory administration is returned: WHAT.  WOULD.  IT.  DO.  TO.  CHANGE.  POLITICS?

Unless and until he can answer that question with concrete, costed, coherent and considered proposals, Emperor Dave’s new clothes seem remarkably non-existent.

Forcing the moat and duck house keepers out is fine by me; but replacing them with more identikit Eton Trifles is hardly what the country needs right now.

The last word – I hope – on Expensesgate to Mr. Steel:

The most disturbing lesson that can be taken from all this, is things must have got pretty rotten when to sort out your code of ethics you depend on the Daily bloody Telegraph.

Hear, hear.