Dorries faces new expenses query
If you thought that a new parliament would draw a line under the whole issue of MPs expenses then think again:
£10,000 claim makes Tory the first MP in an expenses row
NADINE DORRIES, the Conservative MP, faces the first expenses complaint of the new parliament after a row about a £10,000 claim she paid to a friend’s company.
Her former Commons researcher, Peter Hand, is writing to John Lyon, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, questioning whether the claim can be justified.
The complaint will undermine hopes that the expenses controversy can be consigned to the last parliament.
Hand’s complaint relates to a payment to Lynn Elson of Marketing Management Midlands Ltd of £9987.50 (£8500+VAT) in July 2007 for consultation on an annual report and quarterly newsletter, design, layout and production of an annual report and consultation on a constituency survey (see invoice/claim form). As we reported back in February, Dorries went on to claim a further £37,509.75 in allowances, between September 2008 and July 2009, to cover the cost of services supplied by Elson, having already claimed more than £21,000 for services provided by another PR company, Media Intelligence Partners, between November 2006 and September 2008.
Speaking to the Sunday Times, Hand, who worked for Dorries as a researcher from 2005 until November 2008, said:
“The 2006 report was posted on her website and I was closely involved in its production.
“I was never aware a report was produced in 2007 and never saw one. Even if there was this leaflet, I don’t understand how the costs could be so high.”
In response, Dorries told the newspaper that a copy of the report had been posted on her website before adding that:
“I’ve done an annual report every year since I’ve been an MP. We did keep a lot of stuff from Peter.”
Dorries was, however, unable to provide the Sunday Times with either details of the printing firm that carried out the work or a breakdown of the work undertaken by Elson.
—-
Let’s try and follow the money…
Briefly – I know a thing or two about producing leaflets/newsletter having – a few years ago – worked for the NHS in a job which involved knocking out regular community health newsletters with a print/distribution run of 17,500 copies per issue, so let’s try and follow the money…
A couple of weeks ago, Dorries put up a blog post which noted that she’d been contacted by one of the Sunday’s and asked about this particular leaflet and, with a bit of help from Dizzy, managed to put up up a couple of photographs of it, including this one:
Mmm… not much to look at is it – and what there is doesn’t look very much like anything I’d personally call an ‘annual report’.
However, having checked her site using both Google and the Wayback Machine archives, I can find no evidence to support her contention that this leaflet was ever posted on her website or blog. Similarly, my own searches failed to turn up either a quarterly newsletter or an annual report, as I would understand the latter, nor any reference to a constituency survey of any description.
Finally, a check on her expenses documentation failed to turn up any claims/payment for delivery/distribution of this leaflet, which could mean only that this was covered by the payment to Elson, even though there no mention of distribution or delivery on the invoice.
So, what we have is double-sided A4 colour flyer with, at most, about 1000 words of text and three photographs and a payment of £8500 + VAT.
Dorries’s cheapest option would cost £1,100-£1,900 with a mid-range cost of £2,600-£3,500 and a top-end cost of between £4,500 and £5,700, none of which are the kind of sums you’d neglect to even mention on an invoice, especially the solus option which would have left Elson looking at making loose change from the invoice in return for her consultancy work.
And that leave Dorries with a few questions to answer… because, so far, the numbers just don’t add up.
Why a Con-Lib coalition might be good for the Left
Some thoughts on why a deal between the Libdems and Conservatives has to be done, despite the obvious risks:
1. Clegg has no choice but to talk with Cameron. “The coalition of the defeated” is a powerful framing narrative, which would be bad enough on its own. But Brown is also widely hated in England, and installing a Labour PM who isn’t Brown couldn’t be sold to an electorate pre-primed with that “unelected PM” line. (And 23% isn’t a mandate for Clegg to head any Lib-Lab coalition.)
Worse: a Clegg/Labour alliance would be 100% reliant on 9 nationalists and plagued by an extreme version of the West Lothian Question. It would fall and Labour and the LibDems would be annihilated at the subsequent election. It’s a non-starter.
2. However, lefties, anti-Tories and “progressives” who voted tactically to keep the Conservatives out needn’t feel betrayed. We succeeded; this is about as well as the strategy could have gone given the state of the parties’ popularities a year ago.
All those hard-right Tories trying to scupper the Cameron/Clegg deal right now would have been calling the shots in government if we hadn’t voted tactically. They can be neutralized to some extent: dare them to bring a deal down.
3. Those shouting from the sidelines about betrayal need to ask themselves: how did we get here? The answer is that Labour got us here. There’s no appetite in this country for a Tory government, clearly; the vote was an anti-Labour/anti-Brown plebiscite. New Labour betrayed the “progressive cause”, and Clegg is left in the unenviable position of salvaging what he can from the wreck. Almost anything he can secure this weekend is more than we could have expected 6 months ago.
4. It pains me to write this, but Clegg has little mandate for brinksmanship on electoral reform. He polled 23%, Cameron got 36%; and the numbers for England are even worse. A parliamentary commission is a dead-end, obviously, but what if he could kick the Tories’ gerrymandering “reforms” into touch and secure fixed parliamentary terms plus a binding, BC-style Citizen’s Assembly for the Commons and Lords reform based on PR?
Again, that’s more than we could have expected 6 month ago, and might be possible *– especially if backed up by popular calls for major change. Of course, the real culprits on Commons reform are Labour. They held power for 13 years and showed no interest until it became their last lifeline.
5. Like it or not, the British pubic is going to form its opinion about coalitions based on what happens now. For the long-term prize, it’s better that Clegg succeeds in building more than a Minority Government deal with Cameron. Such an unstable deal would put him permanently in the position of being able to bring Cameron down, and then taking the blame from the Tories’ media friends.
Alternatively, it would leave Cameron with the power to time a dissolution to suit him. Clegg should agree a stable governing coalition with a fixed lifetime (of, say, 3 years) and a pre-determined program that, among other things, secures tax cuts for the poor rather than the rich, increases education spending on disadvantaged children, and scraps ID cards, alongside political reform and stymying the Tory hard-right’s culture war.
The alternate scenario could be much worse – anyone fancy a quick election with many more seats within Conservative reach, Ashcroft’s cash, and a Labour Party at civil war, for example?
Major political reform, and the end of FPTP, is going to be a long game. Dealing with the Tories can be the first act, and Clegg and his party should play their role. It might not work, Cameron might not even want it to work, but right now there’s no other show in town.
A majority of public prefer Lab-Libdem deal
A Populus poll for The Times suggests the public are open to a range of different outcomes from the inconclusive General Election.
The paper’s headline Public want Conservatives to share power with LibDems highlights the most popular option, though by a very narrow margin, as Peter Riddell reports.
And in fact a Labour-LibDem coalition (51 per cent) has more support than a full Tory-LibDem coalition (46 per cent, with 52 per cent against). A Tory minority government is just more popular than either (53 per cent), as long as it depends on LibDem support, and much the least popular option (29 per cent) if primarily based on an understanding with the Ulster Unionists.
We may see slightly different results as the question is asked in different ways, but the poll suggests that the public seem to support the politicians negotiating to deal with the hung Parliament outcome, and do not regard the outcome as a foregone conclusion.
Here are the main findings, as reported in The Times today:
A Conservative minority government with the support of the Liberal Democrats is, narrowly, the favoured solution to the electoral stalemate, according to a Populus poll for The Times.The poll of 514 voters today showed that 53 per cent supported that option, with 47 per cent opposed.
A close runner-up is the option of Labour remaining in government in a formal agreement with the Lib Dems. This was backed by 51 per cent and opposed by 45 per cent. It was favoured by nearly nine out of ten Labour voters.
A small majority (52 per cent) oppose the Conservatives forming a coalition government with the Lib Dems, though this is backed by 46 per cent, including about four fifths of Tories.
The public are evenly split — 43 to 45 per cent — on Gordon Brown remaining as Prime Minister. More than a third of Lib Dems back him staying.
The least appealing scenario is for the Conservatives to form a minority government with the support of the Ulster Unionists, favoured by 29 per cent, and opposed by 52 per cent. About 60 per cent of Tory voters support this.
The poll suggests that a majority of the public reject the view expressed vehemently by some right-wing newspapers that it would not be democratically legitimate for Gordon Brown and Labour to seek to negotiate with other parties to form a government with sufficent support in the new parliament.
The newspapers offer to vocalise the democratic outrage of “the people” but in this case would seem to be out of touch with what the public actually think.
——-
From Next Left
Labour needs to do more to see a #progressivemajority
When Nick Clegg meets his MPs today and polls them, I expect he’ll tell them that the party is in a lose-lose situation. Here is why.
Clegg does not want to prop up Gordon Brown’s party because that would make the Libdems more unpopular.
But going into a coalition with the Tories would incur much bigger costs. Clegg has repeatedly said he sees the Libdems as the only true progressive party and that it wants to supplant Labour as the real opposition. Going into an alliance with the Conservatives m not only destroys the idea that the Libdems are the official opposition, but will also throw away a lot of support.
Reading the grassroots – it’s clear that the Libdems overwhelmingly want voting reform to be their principle policy. Not surprising, since the current system works badly against them. But is Cameron likely to agree to anything approaching meaningful vote reform? I doubt it.
And lastly, if you see yourself as the only true progressive force, how do you justify allying with the least progressive party around (other than the DUP of course)?
It looks like Clegg holds the cards, but he’s actually in a very weak position.
The election results were good for the left, given the odds. The BNP lost, UKIP didn’t get anywhere and the Tories failed to get a majority despite all that money and press support behind them. Hell – their main opposition was a highly unpopular leader of a tired party that had no vision and ran one of the lamest campaigns in recent history. They are trying hard to ignore the grim reality but it’s still there.
If Labour want that coalition for the sake of people they claim to be fighting for – then the party needs to make it much easier for Clegg to come over.
For a start, Brown can’t stay as leader. Secondly, they need to adopt the main Libdem policies (which can’t be that hard).
I’d even go as far as saying: make Clegg PM – his approval ratings are far higher than any Labour minister. That would keep Libdems happy and keep Labourites (because they want to stay in power) happy.
On that point, can Labourites please stop going on about how the Libdems are so right-wing and want to slash everything? Here are the figures in graphical form.
Labour ministers should stop being so power-hungry and think about the people they’re seeking to represent. If they truly think the Tories will be terrible for those people, then they need to think about offering more incentives to Clegg.
Nigel Farage likely helped Bercow retain his seat
A small point about the BBC and its infatuation with the right. One of the highlights of the campaign results is how badly the right has done.
But its article on the relection of Speaker John Bercow is: Election 2010: Speaker John Bercow beats Nigel Farage
But the main challenger to Bercow was the independent candidate John Stevens who was backed by the network of independent candidates and supported by Martin Bell.
Stevens was also the candidate selected by Hang ‘em as the one to vote for.
Bercow got 22,000 votes, Stevens got 10,000 and Farage only 8,000. Had Farage not parachuted in but supported the local man, Bercow might even have been defeated, so if anything Farage helped re-elect him by splitting the vote.
A message for Nick Clegg…
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright–
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done–
“It’s very rude of him,” she said,
“To come and spoil the fun!”
The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead–
There were no birds to fly.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
“If this were only cleared away,”
They said, “it would be grand!”
“If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose,” the Walrus said,
“That they could get it clear?”
“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
“O Oysters, come and walk with us!”
The Walrus did beseech.
“A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each.”
The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head–
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.
But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat–
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn’t any feet.
Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more–
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”
“But wait a bit,” the Oysters cried,
“Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!”
“No hurry!” said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.
“A loaf of bread,” the Walrus said,
“Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed–
Now if you’re ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed.”
“But not on us!” the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
“After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!”
“The night is fine,” the Walrus said.
“Do you admire the view?
“It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!”
The Carpenter said nothing but
“Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf–
I’ve had to ask you twice!”
“It seems a shame,” the Walrus said,
“To play them such a trick,
After we’ve brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!”
The Carpenter said nothing but
“The butter’s spread too thick!”
“I weep for you,” the Walrus said:
“I deeply sympathize.”
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
“O Oysters,” said the Carpenter,
“You’ve had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?’
But answer came there none–
And this was scarcely odd, because
They’d eaten every one.
#ProgressiveMajority – the popular vote!
We can’t let the story of a Tory mandate take hold in the tabloids or Sky News.
For every two people who voted Conservative, THREE people voted progressive.
Right now Labour and the Lib Dems together have over 52% of the popular vote. Add in Greens, the Irish SDLP and Alliance and the Progressive Majority has nearer 54% of the vote. That’s without even counting nationalists!
Only 36% of people voted for the Tories. Just two-thirds of the progressive vote.
There is a progressive majority in this country today.
Our collapsing electoral system may have failed to fully reflect it. And that’s a crisis.
But for every two people who voted Tory, three of us voted progressive.
We have more of a mandate than them.
Let’s get building bridges.
UPDATE: A crestfallen Clegg is kicking it forward. This was never going to be easy.
Now it’s up to us to hit refresh, get together and take our country back. #ProgressiveMajority
Go Caroline Lucas!
Thank you, people of Brighton for making history!
I have sympathy for the Labour candidate but this is a massive result for the Green movement and for left-wing politics in general.
Well done to all the greenies who busted their guts campaigning in that constituency. The Green Party should be very happy with itself tonight after this breakthrough.
Ebenezer and The Case of the Election Night Tweeter
Its is not often that you see one of the country’s top opinion-formers picking his nose. As I rounded the corner opposite the pub, I was greeted by the sight of Ebenezer, the celebrated blogger, raising his stubby finger towards his nostril. As it entered the nose, he gave his whole hand an expert twist, as if he were operating a corkscrew. He grimaced as something was levered loose, which he pulled out and began rolling between his thumb and his forefinger.
Meanwhile, his other hand was perched over the keyboard of his laptop, his fingers furiously typing.
His eyes were distracted from the screen as I approached, which put an end to his trowelling. He let his non-keyboard hand flop down below his thigh, and I percieved him flick something out onto the pavement by his tiny table. Then he stood up, and offered the hand in greeting.
I may have paused for a spit-second before I shook it, but I don’t think he noticed.
Ebenezer sighed in mock exasperation. “At last!”
I smiled, and protested. “Not my fault, I left the flat an hour ago. They’re working on the Northern line so I had to get a bus.”
He played along. “Well, you should have known. There’s an app for that, yeah?” He waved his nose-picking hand at the metal chair opposite his, and sat down.
There was half a free-sheet newspaper splayed across the seat. Upside down, the new Prime Minister’s gurning face looked back at me. I picked it up and chucked it onto the ground, somewhere near where the bogey had probably landed.
Then I sat down and placed my iPhone carefully on the table. Ebenezer rolled his eyes at me. “What are you drinking?” he said. I could see he had a half-finished pint of some kind of dark ale on the go, leaned up against his laptop.
“I’ll probably just have a coffee for the moment,” I said. I stood up with the idea of ordering, but a waitress had clocked me and was already striding over. She was bursting out of a tight white shirt and had one of those black ties with a huge knot sitting over the centre of her chest.
When I ordered my a decaf latte, Ebenezer let out an audible snort, and shook his head. The girl bit her lip to suppress a smile, then disappeared inside.
“That knot must have been, like, a quadruple windsor or something” he said when she was out of view.
I decided to change the subject. “What are you working on?”
“Just a blog. But not for the main blog, though. Just my blog. Its about Dave.”
I nodded solemnly. Dave was dead.
“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to write something too. He was one of the first blogs I read when I started. Loads have people have been doing it. Its a good tribute I reckon.”
Dave Carswell was an old-school socialist, trapped in the second decade of the twenty-first century. He had worked in social care sector, but not front-line, and had been active in the unions for many years. He had also been a councillor too, in somewhere like Lewisham, but I think that had been a pretty short-lived experience. Whenever he wrote about that kind of local politics, his words would drip with condescension.
I just knew him as an Angry Old Blogger. He was good for a laugh if you desired some good old fashioned anti-Tory prejudice, the kind of craic you could really only find on the sites of the older guys. Whenever the younger generation attempted the same sort of stuff, it felt a bit false, as if they were desperate to live-up to some retro-ideal. But when Dave mentioned Mrs Thatcher and the milk, you knew it was authentic. His was a very real and very verbose passion.
“So, did you know him well then?” I asked. “I saw him at a couple of the meet-ups, but I knew him mostly from the blogs.”
Ebenezer shrugged. “Its not really an obituary” he said. “More of a review of his last few posts and tweets.”
I understood. Dave Carswell had scored a couple of big hits during the election campaign. “That’s great,” I said. “You could talk about the #LiberalDemoCrap hashtag, that was him. And that review of the first debate where he compared Brown to Michael Foot, that was awesome. Did you read that one?”
“Yeah, the first couple of thousand words, but…” Ebenezer’s voice trailed off for a moment, as if someone had pulled the plug on his inner motor. I could see he was choosing carefully what to say next.
“It’s about the run-up to his death. There was something not quite right about it.”
“You mean, it wasn’t a heart attack?”
He shook his head. “No no, it was definitely a heart attack. But there’s more…”
I cut him off in mid-sentence. “Hey look, if you’re going to write something about burn-out, about him blogging too much, its already been done. One of the obituaries was all about that, I re-tweeted it this morning.”
It was true. Dave had definitely blogged too much in those final days. He had fisked dozens of Cameron’s speeches, and written lengthy ripostes to most of the Telegraph’s front pages. He had played every spoof poster photoshopping game, and would forward links from elsewhere quite relentlessly. I was ashamed to admit it, but I had actually stopped following him on twitter about 10 days before polling, because he had been clogging my stream with RTs. He had dedicated resources to this election that only the unemployed or the retired could spare, though I was never clear whether Dave actually fell into either of these categories, or whether he was just self-employed.
“Well that’s part of it, yeah,” said Ebenezer. “He totally wiped himself out. The amount he was doing, staring at all those screens all day, it was bound to do some damage eventually.”
I was astonished at Ebenezer’s complete lack of self-awareness of his own life-style. He had about six computers set-up in his flat. And a man who posted exegesis on sock-puppetry in local government at 3am had no business casting aspersions over people like Dave, who at least kept to blogging inside normal social hours, 8am to midnight.
But I bit my tongue, for it seemed he was about to say something interesting.
“The thing is, he died at the wrong time.”
I was quick to score a cheap point. “No disrespect or anything, but to die on the first day of this new government may not be the worst thing to happen.”
Ebenezer ignored my attempt at humour. Instead, he messed about with his laptop for a moment. I looked beyond him and noticed the ‘free wi-fi’ logo on the glass pane of the pub door, below the Mastercard symbol. With a maestro like flourish, he clicked the laptop for a final time, and then spun it around to face me. It was Dave’s twitter page.
“Have a look at that!” said Ebenezer, triumphantly.
I was lost. “Its Dave’s tweets, right?”
“Right, but look at the last one.”
I read it aloud off the screen. It was just a short tweet about the new Prime Minister’s and the political fudge that had finally earned him his invitation to the Palace.
“Why so special?” I asked. “I tweeted the same thing. We all did, probably.”
“Yes. But this tweet was posted after Dave died.”
I bent forward in my chair and looked at Ebenezer. What game was he playing?
Eventually I thought of something to say. “Seriously dude, that’s bullshit. You don’t even know when he died.”
Ebenezer snapped shut the lid of his laptop, hard. It made a loud clap, that could have been a crack, and I winced.
“But I do! I do!” he whispered. “I have a contact in the police, who told me that Dave died around 3am on Friday morning.”
I leant back in my chair in disgust. “Get. To. Fuck. You. Twat. You don’t have any contacts in the Met…”
“Yes I do actually” said Ebenezer, suddenly no more than a schoolboy. “There’s this guy, right. He runs a forum where they review giant glass dildos and foreskin clamps and shit like that. Anyway, I traced his IP address back to a policestation in Brent. And but so now he does stuff for me. Nothing major or anything, he just confirms official reports that aren’t public yet. It gives me an edge.”
“What on earth were you doing tracing back IPs from a dildo site?” This revelation made me genuinely angry, because usually Ebenezer was militantly in favour of Internet privacy.
He blanked the question.
“So Dave had his heart attack at 3am, the police surgeon said.” He looked at me for acknowledgement, and I nodded my assent, conceding the point.
“And that figures, because it was at about 3am that it became clear who was going to get the most seats. After the results came in from Southampton and the recount up in Kettering, we could see which way the farts were blowing.”
I smiled. “So Dave had a heart attack because of the election result?”
“Right. He’d invested so much time working against it, he must have been livid. Pushed him over the edge.” His voice was almost breaking up.
I joined the dots that Ebenezer had sketched out for me, and asked the question he wanted me to ask. “So how did he send a tweet at 2pm? Someone must have hacked into his account, right?”
Ebenezer gave me a wry smile, as if to say, now who’s bullshitting. Why on earth would someone spend so much effort hacking into a twitter account, just to post something asinine about the election.
“No one hacked the account” he said, as if in conclusion.
I put my hands over my face and forced a muffled scream through them. “You cannot seriously be thinking what I think your thinking.”
He flipped open the laptop, and woke the screen from sleep. Dave’s tweets flickered back onto the screen. His nose picking finger pressed up against the LCD. “Look at the time stamp of the last tweet.”
I read off the screen. “2:05pm. Yes, I know, after Dave died, so you say.”
“Yes. After Dave died. But before our new Prime Minister announced his coalition. He didn’t make the announcement until at least a quarter to three. I know because I tweeted it when it happened, and Dave had already beaten us to it. I remember thinking it was odd because he never had any inside information before.”
I was speechless. Irritated at Ebenezer behaving like a hypocrite, annoyed that he was wishing ghosts into twitter.
“So that’s the gist of my obituary,” he said. “A guy obsessed with politics right up until the grave… and beyond!” He made a butterfly with his hands and fluttered it towards my face. I pushed him away.
“Seriously man, that’s really cruel. He had a wife, didn’t he?”
“Divorced.”
“Yeah, but still. Thousands of people read your blog every day. Its a really shitty thing to do.”
The mention of his blog statistics seemed to rip Ebenezer back into reality. He sheepishly slumped forward on his bulky frame, losing a couple of inches of height.
Just then, the waitress returned with my coffee. I thanked her, and she smiled. I didn’t smile back, and Ebenezer was much less interested in the knot in her tie than he had been before. She shuffled off.
The chime of a birdsong broke the silence. I was glad of new messages, so I leant forward and picked up my iPhone, to see what was new. It was a slight surprise to see that my screen was blank. The noise had not come from my phone.
Ebenezer nodded towards the floor. A little brown bird was hopping over the discarded free-sheet, twittering away.
I avoided Ebenezer’s gaze and reached for my coffee, and we sat drinking in silence, waiting for something new to happen.
Election Night Live Blog (and BBC TV feed)
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» Revealed: govt to restrict abortion counselling despite Nadine Dorries vote
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» Violence in the office
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