I made a train journey on Saturday – 100 miles took almost exactly three hours; thanks East Midland Trains! To while away the hours I read and re-read a strange little story in Saturday’s Independent:
Veteran Labour MP Sir Gerald Kaufman yesterday blamed a self-diagnosed “obsessive compulsive disorder” for making bizarre and extravagant claims on the public purse including £8,865 for a 40in LCD Bang & Olufsen television.
Sir Gerald also said his condition led him to purchase a pair of Waterford Crystal grapefruit bowls for £220 on his parliamentary expenses.
Sir Gerald, 79, a former government minister, told the Manchester Evening News that his claim for the Bang & Olufsen TV was “daft”, adding: “I’d self-diagnosed myself with obsessive compulsive disorder and I’d bought a new television set.” Sir Gerald had already bought a similar TV without claiming for it. “Then I decided to have a bigger one,” he said. “I thought to myself, ‘Well, you can claim for a TV, so why not?’”
Sir Gerald said he needed two grapefruit bowls because one was for him and another “for any guests”.
He said: “As part of my OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), I have the same breakfast when I’m at home both in London and Manchester every day,” he said. “Half a grapefruit, a bowl of muesli with semi-skimmed milk and a cup of coffee with a Rich Tea biscuit. That’s breakfast.” A cleaner broke one dish, he said “so I got a replacement”.
Sir Gerald also charged the taxpayer £225 for a rollerball pen and admitted when asked to explain his claims that they were “bizarre-sounding”.
A very odd story that simply doesn’t hang together. It turns out that it’s lazy churnalism, almost certainly designed to fill a stray couple of columns, and the genuinely interesting stuff from the MEN interview has been missed.
“I’d self-diagnosed myself with obsessive compulsive disorder and I’d bought a new television set.” Sir Gerald had previously bought a similar TV without claiming for it.
“Then I decided to have a bigger one,” he said. “I thought to myself, `Well, you can claim for a TV, so why not claim for it?’
“Because I’ve got this self-diagnosed OCD, I do things according to rules that I’ve created. I freely acknowledge it was daft and the Commons were quite right to say, `No, you can’t have that on public money.’”
My understanding of OCD is that it most often manifests as repeated behaviour. But Kaufman only claimed for the second TV. If he’d “created his own rules” why didn’t he claim for his first gogglebox? Did he not have his “self-diagnosed” OCD when he bought the first telly? Or when did his self-created rules change to permit expenses claims for 40″ LCD screens?
“Your honour, I have self-diagnosed myself as a kleptomaniac with pyromaniacal tendencies. I know I shouldn’t have burgled that house and then tried to burn it down, but my self-diagnosed disorders mean I live my life according to my own beliefs so it would be wrong of society to condemn me for my actions.”
“I hadn’t done anything with the flat for maybe 35 years and it really was pretty bedraggled. It was not in all that good a state – and there came a time when it was not really habitable…”
In a letter to a constituent, seen by the M.E.N, Sir Gerald said his flat had ‘deteriorated so much over the years’ he was ‘ashamed to invite visitors’.
But….
Sir Gerald said he needed two grapefruit bowls because one was for him and another ‘for any guests’.
So he’s ashamed to invite visitors because of the state of his flat but needs a spare £220 crystal grapefruit bowl for those visitors, who presumably are otherwise sleeping/sitting/eating in squalour?
The MP also charged the taxpayer £1,851 for a rug imported from the Showplace Antique Centre in New York, including £389 Customs duty.
“It’s not an antique rug, though I got it from an antique centre,” he explained. He said he needed a rug as a replacement in a block of flats with wooden floors and sound-proofing issues.
“I suppose I was a bit dim not to realise that some people might regard it as an extravagance, though minus the shipping and the Customs, it wasn’t monumentally expensive,” he said. I don’t know what my constituents pay for rugs, but it might not be all that much more than some of them buy.”
I don’t know its every nook and cranny but I know where the Manchester Gorton constituency is and the sort of accommodation it contains. It’s where Shameless is set, for crying out loud.
There are not many people in Gorton spending £1,500 on rugs, let alone £8,000 on top-of-the-range plasma screens. You’d think the man who’d represented the area in Parliament for so long would know this.
“I live very modestly… You may think I oughtn’t to have a Waterford grapefruit dish. But I do. And I ate out of it today.”
Asked about the pen, he explained: “It’s the pen with which I take notes at my surgery, with spares and refills. I thought I’d better get one that would last.
“If I can say so in a very chaste way, I live very modestly. I don’t have much in the way of luxuries.”
Dude, what the fuck?! You’re well known as being legendarily high maintenance. You’ve got two “similar” £8,000 TVs. You rest your weary feet on a £1,500 rug. You eat your breakfast out of lead crystal bowls. I’ve got a Parker ballpoint I bought for a tenner in 1991 that still works perfectly everyday. Only twats feel the need to use £225 pens.
(Great comment about the pen on the MEN site: “You’re 79! How long do you NEED it to last??”)
It’s bullshit. It’s bullshit that should have been called out by the Manchester Evening News journalist (who instead virtually fellated the man in print), and shouldn’t have been lazily repeated by the Independent journalist.
And still politicians wonder why nobody votes and newspapers wonder why nobody wants to pay the cover price.
Listen to the audio of the interview if you can stomach Kaufman’s self-pitying justification:
