From Nadine Dorries’ Blog. Republished Without Permission.
This is a photo of troughing Tory MP Nadine Dorries at the Classical Brit awards. The British taxpayer pays over £20,000 a year to maintain her constituency home in Bedfordshire, because she declares she lives at her main home – in the Cotswolds!
Dorries has admitted deliberately concealing from her constituents that she has her main home neither in her constituency, nor near Parliament.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/iain_dale_is_a.html#comments
Dorries’ guest and escort on this occasion, the one looking slightly less stupid in the photo, is Iain Dale, the Tory blogger. Dale has robustly defended Dorries’ home claim on the taxpayer on his blog as “Within the rules”. At the same time, Dale has condemned as “Shameless” Dorries’ fellow Bedfordshire MP, Margaret Moran, for having her second home in Southampton, which Dale calls “100 miles from the constituency and 100 miles from London”.
Just like the Cotswolds, in fact. So why is the same thing OK for Dorries but shameless for Moran? Because Dorries is Tory, Moran is Labour and Dale is a hypocrite.
But at least he has a fun and free social life.
Update: More good stuff on Nadine Dorries’ expenses here. I hope that the good voters of North Norfolk note that Dale endorses all of this, and continue to have the good sense to reject him at the ballot box.
http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/05/17/more-questions-about-nadine-dorries-expenses/
It is about time someone had a sustained go an Iain Dale.
He has been accused of hypocrisy many times for denouncing his enemies and protecting his friends under more or less identical circumstances.
If you can judge a political man by the political company he keeps, then there is perhaps more than meets the eye to someone who counts both Neil Hamilton and Derek Conway as close friends.
Interesting how many comments defending Tories are being posted with names I’ve never seen here before. I suppose Craig must have had a lot of Tory readers that came here because of his criticism of NuLabour, and made the rather silly assumption that Craig was therefore on “their side”… Politics as football match; it’s not good, is it?
If any further proof were needed that the Member of Parliament for Mid Bedfordshire is being less than open with her so called ‘explanation’, then the following is from her website, 22nd September 2005. It speaks for itself.
http://www.dorries.org.uk/Story.aspx?ID=14
Nadine Dorries, MP for Mid Beds, and her family are to make their new home in Woburn.
“The decision was very much taken out of my hands by the kids” said Nadine. “They fell in love with the town and it didn’t matter where else we went they kept coming back to Woburn.
As any parent will know, a move is a huge thing especially 3 lively girls. It helps with the process when the children have a big say and feel they an input in to what is happening.
It also makes sense logistically. My constituency office is in Shefford and I am in the House of Commons four nights a week so it is manageable”.
Has anyone mentioned that her second home in the Cotswolds was rented and that her ex-husband lived nearby and looked after the children during the week? On the scale of snouts in troughs I think this is pretty low down the list and certainly not as bad as Margaret Moran.
She’s also a lot fitter.