Mr Sanctimonious, Nigel Farage of UKIP has been blatting on about how his party won't be talking about expenses during this campaign. He should have listened to his own advice.
He's just been caught boasting about how he's personally creamed off £2 million from his expenses and allowances.
He's just been caught boasting about how he's personally creamed off £2 million from his expenses and allowances.
Nigel Farage, who is calling on voters to punish "greedy Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem MPs" at the European elections on 4 June, boasted of his personal expenses haul at a meeting with foreign journalists in London last week.
"It is a vast sum," Farage said. "I don't know what the total amount is but - oh lor - it must be pushing £2 million."
Give them enough rope, as the saying goes.
Maybe now people will realise that there's only one option open to them on June 4th. A vote for a party, any party, is a vote for corruption.
Vote for the only option to stamp out the sleaze. Vote for the whistleblowers - Jury Team.
I posed quite a lot today with a Jury Team banner. Keep your eye out in the press tomorrow
ReplyDeletehttp://bastardoldholborn.blogspot.com/2009/05/fun-games-at-parliament.html
I saw you (briefly) on the news and about wet myself. I knew a few of the guys were planning on going to see you, but I couldn't make it.
ReplyDeleteThat £2m is spread across all their MEPs for the last ten years I think. Not such a big figure then.
ReplyDelete2 million of European Taxpayers money over 10 years "To help promote UKIP's message..."
ReplyDeleteMoney well spent then.
How much has the EU spent on promoting itself?
ReplyDeleteSorry lads, the story says HE took it. Unless of course you have evidence that the others took the money too.
ReplyDeleteAnd the money (presumably) comes from allowances for office equipment, staff, hotels etc. If your work gives you an allowance for safety boots and you spend it on a haircut instead, that's theft.
You want to promote your party - do fundraisers, get sponsors, attract donors, shake collection tins.
You Can't Be Trusted. You are Dishonest.
The story is rather garbled I'm afraid. There are no second home allowances, no furniture allowances.
ReplyDeleteWhat there is is an allowance to hire staff. £240,000 a year. Over a decade you can see how that would mount up to £2 million. And every MEP takes this. Yes, Labour, Tory, Lib Dem and Green.
Given that a euro constituency can have 100 times the population of a Westminster one it's not all that much compared to hte cost of an MP.....£1.6 million over a decade on average.
And your point is Tim? He took money intended for one purpose and used it (he claims) for party political purposes.
ReplyDeleteJust how corrupt is UKIP? Fraud, money laundering, misappropriation of public money.
And how incredibly thick is Farage? I mean, just how stupid do you have to be to brag about creaming expenses to journalists in the middle of a massive expenses scandal?
Can the man tie his own shoelaces?
Sorry, is this supposed to make me vote for Jury Team? As others have said £2 mill / ten years / 9 MEPs makes around 20-25 grand a year. Chickenfeed compared to what's been going on in Westminster. And coming from a source a biased as the Guardian? Christ, might as well ask Gordon Brown for his opinion. There are reasons to vote for a Jury Team candidate, but parroting manufactured slurs won't be one - I can vote Labour if that sort of thing swung me. Also there are reasons not to vote for UKIP but this teacup size storm isn't one of them either.
ReplyDeleteTelegraph do you then?
ReplyDelete"Ukip may be seeking capitalise on the expenses imbroglio, but its record in this area is hardly spotless. Two of its MEPs became mired in scandal almost immediately after their election. Ashley Mote was expelled from the party and was later jailed for benefit fraud – he plans to appeal the verdict – while Tom Wise is facing prosecution for alleged false accounting and money laundering relating to his EU expenses. He denies the charges.
Ukip's detractors say the party exercises double standards in using its MEPs' expenses, which dwarf those available in Westminster, to fund anti-EU activity.
A close friend of Mr Farage says the Ukip leader uses his expenses to fund the party, but does not abuse them personally. "I know he has remortgaged his house – that's how short of money he is," said the friend."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/local-elections/5369813/Local-elections-2009-fact-and-fiction-on-planet-Ukip.html
Manufactured slurs? The man took the money and used it to fund his party.
Be honest, if we were talking about a Labour or Tory MEP doing the same thing (who knows, maybe they do), UKIP supporters would be screaming blue murder.
I've told Farage himself that there are things he says that I agree with. Absolutely, we must have a referendum on Europe. Absolutely, we must at the very least see the return of sovereign powers to the UK. But I couldn't in all conscience support a party that thinks it's ok to use money intended to create jobs and use it for poltical purposes instead.
You can't be a "little bit corrupt", just like you can't be "a bit of a thief". You either have moral standards or you don't.
You also need to display a bit of common sense. Boasting to reporters about skimming expenses is an incredibly, unbelievably stupid thing to do.
UKIP are just the BNP with better haircuts. Nasty little xenephobes the lot of them.
ReplyDeleteBut why should Jury Party be any different. Every party seems to be in it for themselves.
Disgraced MP's should not be allowed to stay on in parliament like a bad smell - they must resign their seats, and leave parliament immediately - the only reason they want to stay on, is so they can pick up a large lump sum cheque.....These dodgy MP's must get the boot NOW. They don't deserve £64,000 in "resettlement grant" cash. Do they?
ReplyDeleteThe same goes for MEP's who flagrantly abuse the system.
What is a possible solution? Salaries should be set reasonably high, but in line with the Civil Service Pay Scale. Just as London's Court of Common Council maintains a small suite of bedrooms for use of its 100 Member Parliament, so Westminster should do the same - so MP's who need to overnight in London, can do so in a modicum of comfort, and at minimal expense to the taxpayer.
The Jury Team http://juryteam.org are putting up candidates in ALL constituencies for the EU elections.
Jury Team candidates stand for good governance. it has concrete policies, that are all to do with fixing the broken political system.
1. Get as many independents elected as possible - force the government to justify its policies, and to present reasoned argument for them - not relying on the whip, which turns Parliament into an extension of the executive.
2. Get Chairmen of the committees elected by secret ballot, so stop the whips controlling the appointments.
3. Selection to committees by voting, not by appointment. No whipping to be allowed.
4. No members of the government at all to be allowed to sit on committees in parliament.
for more detail, see the main Jury Team website. http://juryteam.org
To interact with the candidates and other supporters, visit our new social networking site
http://juryteam.socialgo.com
and http://juryteam.ning.com
Promoted by Evan Philip Millner and other candidates on behalf of Jury Team at 152 Grosvenor Road, London, SW1V 3JL.