The Lords of Looting laugh at our stupidity

Yesterday, I mentioned just a few ways our crooked MPs massively enrich themselves at our expense. But what about our lords? How honest are they?

Here are just a few indications that the venerable House of Lords is just as much of a cess pit as the sleaze-ridden�Commons:

1. More Money, Money, Money In 1997, the Lords cost us about �42m at today’s prices. This has rocketed up to over �120m last year, around 3 times as much. House of Lords officials claim this is because they have changed the way they do their accounts. But if something once cost us taxpayers �42m now costs us over �120m, I’d say that’s a significant increase

2. Increase those allowances The amount of expenses lords could claim have been quietly increased year after year. Since 1997, the amount they could claim per night more than doubled; the amount per day more than doubled; the amount for office costs more than doubled; the amount for office costs when the Lords wasn’t in session more than tripled. The cost per lord in allowances and staff wages increased from �97,725 to �114,721 in just the 3 years from 2010 to 2013

3.�Absurd rules on main home When there were some rules, our noble lords just needed to spend one night a month at one of their homes to be able to designate it as their main home. Let me repeat that – just ONE night a month. This meant that a lord with a main home in London and a second home in say France could designate�their French home as their main home if they just visited it one weekend per month and then could claim money every single night they spent at their real main home�in London and for their travel from London-France-London

4. Receipts? What are those? And, of course, being noble lords, our peers never had to show any receipts. Their word was trusted

5. Carry on thieving You’d think that with such generous expenses and such lax rules, our lords would be satisfied with the huge amounts they were getting from us. But, no. Some even pushed the absurdly generous boundaries to further enrich themselves – Baroness Udin, Lord Taylor, Lord Hanningfield, Lord Bhatia are just a few who resorted to what looks to me like outright fraud to steal even more of our money

6. Get rid of the rules! Faced with the embarrassment of being exposed by the press for being as corrupt as our MPs, the Lords authorities acted quickly and decisively – to protect themselves from further scrutiny. They completely abolished any rules at all. So, instead of peers having to say where they had spent the night and what travel they had done, the Lords moved to the same SOSO (Sign On Sod Off) system used by the equally venal crooks at the European Parliament. From now on, a lord just has to turn up for 5 minutes or less to sign on to get their daily �300 and then they can ‘sod off’ to do whatever they want. As the Leader of the Lords, Lord Strathclyde,�explained, “we would sweep away the controversial rules on so-called second homes“. That’s nice, for�our lords. Then this great man went on to boast that our lords wouldn’t have to trouble themselves with minutiae like claims forms which we plebs have to use when we claim� any expenses, “No more juggling of utility bills and claims forms”.

7. It’s all tax-free! Yipppeee! And, I believe that as all money claimed by our lords is�classed as an�’allowance’ rather than salary, it’s all tax-free! Yabba-dabba-dooo!

Truly, becoming a lord is now a license to take money for nothing – at�stupid, gullible taxpayers’ expense.

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