David Craig, on December 19th, 2013You may have noticed a story in the last couple of days about the (IMHO) fat, greasy, worthless, parasitical scumbag Tory Lord Hanningfield. Apparently a newspaper followed him and found that he had been turning up at the Lords to sign in for his £300 per day taxfree expenses then leaving after being there less than an hour.
After the MPs’ expenses scandal, in which 4 lords also got caught, the Lords promised that they were going to “modernise” their expenses system to cut out fraud. Most people are too busy to have time to look behind what the House of Lords actually did to “modernise” its expenses system, so I’ll explain.
MPs have always had to submit receipts for some of their expenses. But prior to the expenses scandal, the House of Lords didn’t require receipts. As all members were “honourable”, it was considered sufficient that if a member said they had incurred expenses, then those expenses were reimbursed. Of course, many of the Lords’ members’ expenses were entirely fictitious allowing the almost 900 greedy, thieving scum to steal millions of our money year after year after year.
The main way the lords stole our money was by claiming to have incurred hotel and other expenses for staying in London when they were actually nowhere near the place, already had a home in London or else were staying free of charge with friends. Three members were sentenced to prison, but all got out after serving laughably small parts of their original sentences.
However, the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was no basis to prosecute one of the four – Baroness Udin. The Baroness, who had a housing association home in London, claimed that her “main home” was a house in Kent that neighbours said she seldom if ever visited. But she managed to get off because the House of Lords authorities “clarified the rules” on what constituted a “main home” by conveniently (for the honest baroness) deciding that a peer could nominate any property as their main home even if they only “visit” it once a month.
Anyway, the House of Lords promised to clean up their expenses so the thieving stopped. But what they did wasn’t to clamp down on abuse. Instead they loosened the rules so that it became much easier for members to take our cash. The system whereby members of the Lords had to say they had come to London was replaced by the expenses system used in that den of thieves – the European Parliament. This is what British MEPs laughingly call the “SOSO system” – “Sign On Sod Off”.
Now, to get their £300 per day, members of the Lords just have to turn up for about 5 minutes to sign a register, then they can sod off to go to their other jobs or to do whatever they want confident that their £300 per day will soon hit their bank accounts.
In the European Parliament in Brussels, the SOSO system leads to a large queue forming every Friday morning as MEPs rush to sign in to get their daily allowance for supposedly working for us on their way to the airport for their journeys home.
Of course, many lords stay longer then the 5 minutes or so it takes to sign in. After all, with its many agreeable taxpayer-funded bars, cafes and restaurants, the House of Lords is a very pleasant place to spend a few hours chatting with other like-minded, greedy, self-serving, thieving scum. (click to see picture more clearly)
Since being released from prison after only serving 9 weeks of a 9-month sentence, Hanningfield has reportedly been claiming about £3,200 a month in taxfree expenses, often for only turning up for a few minutes a day. He claims there are about another 50 peers doing the same as him – Signing On and Sodding Off – so the real number is probably several hundred a day.
Baroness Udin was ordered to repay about £125,349 and has since been claiming expenses at a rate of up to £40,000 a year. I wonder how often she visits her “main home” now?
The House of Lords is just a House of Thieves. In the US, there are just 435 members of Congress and 100 members of the Senate for over 330 million people. In Britain we have 650 MPs and almost 900 lords for about 67 million people. Yet the USA makes its own laws, while about 80% of our laws are made in Brussels. It’s time for clean out of the Augean Stables that are the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
How about 200 MPs and 50 elected Lords? That sounds about right for a small administrative region of the EU superstate.
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The H of L has always been a bit of an oddity. However, the members mainly consisted of British people who could trace their roots back for centuries and had the best interest of the country at heart. They cared about our history and traditions, and acted as a brake to any of the H of C excesses. Now, just look at the quality of people in there, filth and scum from the third world with no historical connections to our country. Udin? I wouldn’t employ her to clean toilets.
As someone whom has been away from the UK for many years, could some kind soul tell me what is going on. Read the other day this chap won a bike race and has now been Knighted, what credit can there be to these appointments if he and others do so little for so much.
I have also read that a previous government was ‘selling’ these gongs. It used to be that after many years of dedicated and unselfish service to the Country people would be rewarded for that service. I know things change over time, but really, are things so base as to bring shame and dishonor on our society, or is there no such thing as shame or dishonor anymore.
The nationalists in Scotland want rid of the House of Lords , because there is no s n p, arse holes in it , that is one thing to be grateful for. Never let them in the last thing you want fascists in this parliament. No to racism, they are scum and that is all there is to it.