L'Etat, c'est moi!

JuliaM has a fine piece on Jacqui Smith's use of day-release prisoners to paint her house - or, as the Mail inevitably has it, her £450,000 house - in exchange for a donation and some plants.

It's an interesting little coda to the expenses scandal - from which, come to think about it, Smith didn't exactly emerge smelling of roses - and the reasons for which senior politicians helped themelves to public funds.

I suspect there is a particular form of hubris here - become a political animal and eventually you can no longer distinguish your public and private personae. Thus our MPs trotted merrily off to buy top-of-the-range furnishings at our expense, believing it was part of their inalienable right to life, Liberty prints and the pursuit of valances.

Perhaps it's seeing the grace-and-favour accommodation given to those in high office - look at the Bercows, after all - but the expenses affair served to illustrate the way many MPs felt entitled to have their homes improved at public expense without performing the public functions that explain our funding of Chequers and its ilk.

Leaving aside the interesting image of the Obamas or the Portugese Ambassador popping round for an evening chez Smith and Timney - probably best not to ask what's on the television - this story somehow sums up the arrogance that confuses the office with the person doing it.

Judging by Jacqui Smith's choice of painters and decorators, it's a hard habit to break.

Sisters Aren't Doing it For Themselves....

....they're paying someone else a pittance to do it for them.

Some years ago, Robbie Coltrane's character in Cracker abrasively accused a high-flying career woman of hypocrisy, with (roughly) the words,
"So while you're out lecturing on Women's Studies and career opportunities, some poor cow's got her arm round your U-bend."

I was reminded of that by a story I came across while looking up Dick Timney's expenses-funded internet phone (was that really such a good idea...?). It seems that our former Minister for Women has been less than sisterly in her treatment of her domestic staff:

the cleaner at her 'second home' in Redditch, Worcestershire, has been paid £2,400 a year - or about £46.15 a week - without a pay rise for five years. The national average wage has risen by 14.5% over this time.

So much for female solidarity!

New Labour - The Rich Pickings of Power

‘Tory mole leaks Home Secretary expenses claim!’ is the cry in New Labour circles as the papers gleefully report the state-subsidised viewing habits of the Smith/Timney ménage*.

Their immediate conclusion that the whistle-blower must be a paid-up member of the political opposition is revealing to say the least and has led the good folk of Newgate to draw the following conclusions:

a) The glitterati of Nulab cut their political teeth in the early 80’s, when dirty tricks were de rigeur in student politics – the evil that was Thatcherism justifying extreme measures in opposition. They therefore assume all politicians are similarly devious and unscrupulous and that the only motive for exposure is to gain political advantage.

b) They believe firmly that they are on the side of righteousness and therefore anyone who seeks to expose them must by definition be on the side of wrong ie Tory.

c) They are so detached from the real world that they cannot envisage anyone acting from motives that are not party political.
and
d) All NuLab have their snouts so firmly embedded in the trough that they know none of them could possibly be in a position to expose dubious expenses claims, hence their certainty that the mole is a Tory.

Remember the 80’s Labour rallying cries of ‘End Tory sleaze!’ and ‘Fat Cats Out!’? Like the unfortunate inmates of Animal Farm, we can now peer in through the windows of expense-funded second homes to see New Labour on their hind legs chanting their altered slogan; ‘Two legs good, four legs bad!’

*While we are inclined to believe Ms Smith’s assertions that she never intended the taxpayer to fund the films in question, it is difficult to remain charitable about the fact that they were presumably watched on the £1,100 home entertainment system she claimed on expenses.