There is overwhelming evidence that New Labour’s Jim Devine MP is a criminal who has produced faked receipts for almost five thousand pounds.

The Herald has been doing an excellent job of digging in to Devine’s expenses. Last week they uncovered a “receipt” he submitted for 2157 pounds for rewiring. The company name, address, postcode and VAT number all proved bogus.

It could have been that Devine did pay for the work, and was given a fake receipt. But that seems less likely given this week’s revelation. Devine claimed 2326 pounds for 60 metres of shelving at his constituency office in Blackburn, West Lothian. (The same town has “Hairy Angel” Susan Boyle, and a criminal for an MP.)

Just think how much 200 feet of shelving is. A huge amount. About 2,000 books worth. But the Herald says that there is no shelving at the constituency office. What is more, the receipt is issued by the landlord of the local pub.

The electrician with the false name, address and VAT registration cannot be produced because, unfortunately, Devine says he has died. I do hope the pub landlord does not have a keg fall on him in the cellar.

Amazingly, there is not any police investigation into Devine.

http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2511507.0.more_questions_for_mp_at_the_centre_of_expenses_mystery.php

Constitutional reform is in the air, and our corrupt political parties are trying to point the debate in directions which will entrench and enrich themselves still further.

James Purnell’s plea for the taxpayer to fund the parties should be rejected out of hand. So too should David Cameron’s call for “Open Primaries”.

Cameron does not mean open primaries. They would not be “Open” at all. I could not say that I consider myself a Conservative and stick my name down on the ballot paper. No, we would be presented with a carefully vetted shortlist of unpleasant party hacks determined by the party. They would then be able to shove yet more propaganda at us, and at great public expense the taxpayer would foot the bill for an election between them.

The result would be yet more attention for preening party politicians, and a still greater electoral advantage of exposure for them over independents and small parties. Or is the state going to run primaries for all the parties, including UKIP, Greens, BNP, Libertas etc etc?

The American system manages to produce even lower levels of voter turnout, even less range of political opinion, and even more dominance for corrupt party machines, than our own. I can see why the Tories would want to promote the model. The voters should tell them to get stuffed.

James Purnell has decided that the answer to the problems of our political system is for the taxpayer to give out yet more money to politicians, by increased state funding of political parties.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/29/parliament-reform-a-new-politics

The comments section reflects the predictable, and quite justified, outrage over the public at the sight of a politician planning to siphon off yet mote of their taxes to his own advantage. Purnell’s ludicrous suggestion is a sign of how completely New Labour are out of touch with the mood of the electorate.

But his proposal is much more dangerous than the sums of money involved. The parties assume they have a god given right to be entrenched in our constitution. They act as though the political parties embody democracy. In fact the parties, with their spin, vicious leadership structures and whipping to stifle thought and debate, are the enemy of emocracy. Why should the people fund them, and further disadvantage independent candidates and emergent parties and groupings?

One solution to the financial problems of political parties is to ban national advertising during election campaigns.

The current system is farcically unfair. As an independent candidate at the last general election, I was severely constrained in the amount of money I was allowed to spend by law on campaigning. Yet all around the constituency, vast billboards carried New Labour posters. That did not break Jack Straw’s spending limit, because it was national not constituency advertising. But I was not allowed to do anything to match it.

I am not convinced that the ever larger budgets of the major parties at elections do anything to enhance our democracy. Certainly let them campaign, hold meetings and press conferences, get all the media coverage they can. Let them raise money and fund it themselves. But paid national advertising should be banned. Local meetings, leaflets, canvassers and the electoral address should become principal sources of information about candidates again. The internet is relatively inexpensive.

I have no difficulty with trade union members paying a levy to New Labour, providing they choose to opt in to it. But I can think of no reason why any trade union member would think it was in their interest to fund people like James Purnell.

There should be a cap on the size of individual donations to parties – perhaps twenty thousand pounds might be reasonable.

The answer to the funding problems of political parties, is for the party organisations to become much smaller, less powerful, employ far far fewer amoral besuited spin doctors, spend less on advertising and go back to being highly dependent on voluntary workers.

Now that’s real democracy.

Globalisation really has made the world a small place. I am currently in Africa, and last night was speaking with an African minister well connected to a group of New Labour’s senior black activists. He told me that David Milliband has been talking with his brother, two other cabinet ministers and Alan Johnson about how to ditch Brown if New Labour come fourth in the European Elections, behind the Tories, Lib Dems and UKIP.

There is a view now inside New Labour that coming fourth is a very real possibility, and would trigger mass panic among MPs and possibly a spiral downwards to electoral annihilation next year. They fear the Lib Dems traditionally poor performance in Euro elections will be outweighed by a failure of the New Labour core vote to turn out. There are also tensions over the Hazel Blears strategy of trying to motivate the core vote by talking up the BNP threat, with many in the black community feeling this was counter-productive in giving the BNP extra publicity.

Obviously there is an element of Chinese whispers here, but I have no doubt that his account is broadly true and does reflect what it now feels like to be inside as New Labour implodes – as witness the appalling revelation that 52 New Labour MPs have formally requested to be appointed for life to the disgusting croneyism that is the House of Lords.

I wonder if Uzbek government spokesman Andrew Dismore MP is one? No way he’ll hold Hendon, thank God.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/andrew_dismore.html#comments

Good article on New Labour’s rush for the Lords by Andrew Kettle. Comments are even better.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/28/labour-reform-a-new-politics?commentpage=1

I now deeply regret supporting Nadine Dorries on the issue of blogging freedom after her ISP pulled her blog, following legal threats from the odious Barclay Bros. it is now back. Nadine is such a courageous campaigner for truth, she has pulled the article from her website – something I have never done in response to threats from lawyers acting for Usmanov, Spicer or anybody else.

But then, I have never libelled anyone. Nadine was introduced to blogging by Dorries Dale, recently found guilty of libel in a case that set the Mail on Sunday back over 350,000 pounds including damages and costs.

http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/2009/05/press-release/

You can find a photo of Britian’s most libellous bloggers here, as they spend their lives on a never-ending round of freebies.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/dorries_and_dal.html#comments

Tory hypocrisy – and that of David Cameron in particular – is exposed by their attitude to John Bercow as a possible speaker.

I have to admit to an being an admirer of Bercow because he has been the most consistent and active supporter of human rights for Uzbekistan in the House of Commons. Strangely the only other MP who comes to mind straight away as a doughty parliamentary supporter for the Uzbek people is also a Tory, Greg Hands.

But the Tories apparently hate Bercow, as witness this Spectator blog article today.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/3642073/speaking-out-against-bercow.thtml

And why do they hate him? Because he is a backbench MP with a mind of his own, who does not slavishly follow the party whip.

The Mail on Sunday editorial attacking Bercow today describes him as “Increasingly New Labour.” But that is untrue. Where Bercow has been particularly inclined to rebel, is on issues where there has been an unholy alliance between the Tories and New Labour to bring in mad policies. Bercow has therefore voted against university top-up fees, foundation hospitals and various manifestations of the private finance initiative – all things where his party supported Blair – and has gone futher than his party in opposing New Labour “anti-terror” legislation.

In fact Bercow’s voting record looks more Tory veering to Lib Dem than to New Labour – with the major exception that he voted for the Iraq war.

That last is only one example of an area where I disagree with John Bercow. But when the man votes on any issue, it is not because someone told him to, it is because he has thought about it and used his brain to decide what is best.

That is exactly the sort of MP we need.

It is also why the Tories hate him. And their hatred of him exposes the full extent of Tory hypocrisy. They will jump on any reformist bandwagon going in a direction which may help them into power. But once in power, they will rule with just as much of an over-mighty executive, just as much throttling by party whip, just as much contempt for independent parliamentary thought, as New Labour have shown.

The Tories simply want their turn to be the elective dictators.

Andrew Marr questioned David Cameron rather well on precisely this point this morning. Cameron was trying to do his feely touchy reformist bit, and Marr moved to pin him down on whether a Tory government would allow more scope to parliament, by allowing backbenchers to make up their own minds how to vote. Cameron said there should be more free votes, but that politics was a team game and collective responsibility an important principle.

Marr then went on to question Cameron about his attitude to Bercow for speaker. While saying that a party leader should not support a particular candidate, Cameron managed to give the impression that he had just smelled something very bad, and added “But it must be a figure with the necessary respect and authority”, plainly meaning to cast doubt on Bercow’s possession of those qualities.

Remember, if you vote Conservative you do not get reform.

You get Tories.

The female of the species is more deadly than the male. While several of the worst offending male MPs in sleazegate have announced that they will stand down at the next election, the females all continue to tough it out. While the men caught with their hands in the till have appeared shamefaced, the women have defended themselves shrilly.

Nowhere has this contrast been more sharp than in the case of Andrew Mackay and Julie Kirkbride, who are guilty of the same offence in the most literal sense. Husband and wife, both MPs, they lived together and each claimed a second home allowance.

He has announced he will stand down. She is battling on. What is that about? It is made worse by the additional, though comparatively minor, complication that it is her brother who was living, against the rules, at one of their homes.

Kirkbride is just one example.

The shrill fool Nadine Dorries, after lying about where she mainly lives and deliberately concealing from her constituents that she did not live in the constituency, tells us she feels got at. The horrible Hazel Blears still continues to bounce right into our faces. There is a good argument that Margaret Moran is the most blatant abuser of the rules to get money, and abuser of her position for her lobbying company. She shows no sign of going voluntarily at all.

You have to pinch yourself to believe that Tessa Jowell is still in the Cabinet after laundering, through her joint mortgage, money that has been proven in court to come from crime.

Steen, Mackay, Viggers, Martin, Chapman and others are going. The women so far just will not go. Their behaviour is so hideous, they will be putting back the cause of women in politics for a generation.

I think the phrase brazen hussies, selected with due care and attention, is in fact totally appropriate.

It is now confirmed that Nadine Dorries blog has been taken down by her webhosts after threats by lawyers acting for the creepy and anti-democratic Barclay Brothers. I particularly dislike them because they destroyed the Scotsman, which was once a good newspaper.

Nadine Dorries had accused the Barclay Brothers of outing the sleaze about MPs in their Daily Telegraph as part of an anti-democratic plot. The same accusation was in this Independent piece at 2am yesterday. The Independent has edited it out. Annoyingly there is no sign of a google cache.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/nadine-dorries-this-is-a-witch-hunt-ndash-the-torture-must-end-1689753.html

Nadine has completely lost it, after being caught lying about the location of her main residence, in order to cash in on the second home allowance. Her sense of entitlement has been getting up people’s noses for the last 24 hours. I cannot better the writing of Mr Eugenides:

http://mreugenides.blogspot.com/2009/05/good-night-and-good-luck.html

I have spent most of the past six years working against torture, and have met many victims, in some cases dead victims. So Nadine’s whinge that MPs were being tortured after being found out was extremely annoying to me.

But the bullying action by the Barclay Brothers against a blog is another example of the use of our absurd libel laws to silence freedom of speech. No court has ruled that Nadine was libellous. She did not have the chance to defend her views in court. She was simply and effectively silenced, and her entire blogging corpus taken down.

There are numerous ironies to this story. Here are a few:

– The Barclay Brothers have stopped Nadine when she was very effectively digging her own political grave.

– Nobody took seriously her argument that the sleaze revelations were an anti-democratic conspiracy by the Barclay Brothers. The Barclay Brothers will bring far more opprobrium on themselves by this action than was cast by the original accusation.

– If they go through with a libel action, the money Dorries stole from the taxpayer could end up with the even less deserving Barclay Brothers. Bloody Hell!

No doubt Nadine’s blog will still be back up and hosted somewhere safe. But this is a wearing process. When Usmanov did exactly the same to me, we had to change our main url from co.uk to org.uk. We lost ranking for three years worth of links: our technorati score tumbled overnight from 370 to 28, and still hasn’t fully recovered. Neither have our google or wikio rankings.

Bloggers can dispute heartily. We use our free speech sometimes to quarrel – I have been doing that too much lately.

But when free speech in the blogosphere is attacked, we have a tradition of standing together. I have benefited from that more than most. I will stand now by Nadine. If she wants her article republished, I will do so here..

UPDATE

You will find Nadine Dorries offending article in full in the comments section below. I do not agree with her, but I do agree with her right to say it. I know it is there and accept legal responsibility for it.

Nadine Dorries, the MP who lied about where she lives to claim her constituency home as her second home and get the taxpayer to pay for it, is tryng to be feminine and vulnerable and make us feel sorry for her. The atmosphere at Westminster is so gloomy, she tells Radio 4, that everyone fears a suicide.

Well, Westminster Bridge is very handy. Jump, you bastards, jump!

New Labour MP Ben Chapman is to retire at the next general election. Having stolen £15,000 from the taxpayer in exaggerated mortgage claims, let us hope Inspector Knacker retires him before that.

Chapman was a fellow retired member of the British diplomatic service, with a notably undistinguished career. As a former Commercial Counsellor in Beijing, Chapman remained a tireless worker against human rights in China, believing trade to be more important.

It is understood that, apart from spending more time with his money, Chapman is expecting to spend more time with his Chinese friends cashing in on his advocacy.

The thief Chapman would of course have been retired by the voters anyway. I will offer 10/1 against New Labour holding Wirral South at the next election.

So for offering to change legislation for cash, and then for lying to the committee investigating it with a story they called “Wholly implausible”, Lord Scumbag Taylor of Blackburn has been suspended for a whole six months – for 50% of which the Lords is on holdiay anyway!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8060003.stm

It is another symptom of the failure of the Establishment to understand that the public really are furous at their easy tolerance of corruption among their number.

Taylor has been doing this for years, making millions of pounds as a “Consultant” and “Director” for numerous companies which depend on government contracts, particularly in the defence industry, but he also has a major financial interest in the government’s crazed authoritarian ID card scheme.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/08/more_lord_scumb.html

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/08/theres_good_mon.html

So in the autumn Taylor will be back in the Lords, peddling Jack Straw’s influence again.

It has been a comparatively good couple of days. While there is little justice, at least there is exposure of some of the criminals that this blog has been pursuing for years. Tessa Jowell paid off her mortgage – three times – with money given to her husband by Blair’s friend Berlusconi, as a reward for lying for him in court.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2006/02/normality_and_t.html

That is undoubtedly true, and has been again confirmed by Italian judges.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8058206.stm

The fact that Jowell is still a minister is quite astonishing, and again says a great deal about New Labour’s toleration of corruption. She still maintains a pretence of having separated from Mills. Berlusconi is no doubt engaged in his normal bribery and threats of the Italian judiciary to keep Mills from having to serve his sentence. I do hope that he fails, and that the Jowells are genuinely separated, for the four and a half year jail term at least.

The memories of political commentators are short. It is remarkable how little the name of Elizabeth Filkin has featured in discussion of the current massive sleaze revelations.

The outcry against Commons sleaze at the end of the Major government led to a toughening up of regulation. The Blair government found this inconvenient, particularly when standards commissioner Elizabeth Filkin was investigating ministers Geoffrey Robinson, John Reid and Keith Vaz.

So Blair and Martin forced her out, replacing her with someone more compliant, on a markedly lower salary and with less resources to do the job.

The culture of sleaze and corruption did not accrue accidentally and innocently. It was entered into quite deliberately, and New Labour ruthlessly eliminated obstacles to corruption.

This is the BBC interview Filkin gave as she was forced out:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1690000/audio/_1693146_filkin08_filkin.ram

One particularly egregious abuse of MPs’ allowances is not covered by the interim measures Lord Martin-in-waitng announced yesterday as agreed by the party leaders.

The additional cost (or second home) allowance exists in theory to cover the extra cost to an MP of having to maintain a home in both their constituency and at Westminster.

But there is nothing preventing an MP from maintaining their main home somewhere else entirely, and then claiming a second home either in their constituency or in Westminster. Most of us expect to have to move to our place of work. MPs don’t have to do that.

This practice of having the main home somewhere else completely is apparently quite common. That must be true, because we have the word of the great Iain Dale for that (or Dorries Dale as he will henceforth be known here). He told us in a comment on this blog:

Craig, there are many MPs who don’t have their first homes in Westminster or in their constituencies. It can be for a number of reasons. In her case it was to do with her family.

I’ve made clear that if it was me I would have my main home in the constituency, as I promised in North Norfolk. But what is right for one individual might not be right for the other. Surely the point is that any claim on the taxpayer has to be for a consituency home or in Westminster. Margaret Moran’s was neither, which is why you were wrong to draw the analogy. Perhaps you’d be good enough to admit that.

Now it seems to me that, if people are stupid enough to elect an MP who won’t live in the constituency, we can’t stop that. But I can see no reason at all why the taxpayer should pay for a second home anywhere, for an MP who insists on having their main home neither in Westminster nor in their constituency.

(The case of Nadine Dorries is an example of this and in fact still worse. She did in fact have her main home in the constituency, but Nadine Dorries lied about it and pretended her main home is in the Cotswolds, in order to defraud the taxpayer of a great deal of money for her “Second home”).

http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2009/05/aca_nadine_dorries.asp#comments

This system of absentee MPs funded by the taxpayer is a major abuse and must be stopped immediately.

After Blackburn, I had promised never to put myself again through the horrors of standing as an independent parliamentary candidate. But the sleazthat has been revealed is only a symptom of the moral laxity and low quality of our MPs, as revealed in their endorsement of illegal war, torture, curtailment of civil liberties, the Ponzi scheme economy… I could go on.

But where to stand? After Blackburn, I refuse to stand in any constituency that does not contain at least one bookshop. Nobody can comprehend the true disaster of the collapse of our public education system, without going to Blackburn. No wonder New Labour have to collect in their postal ballots and fill them in for them.

I had pretty well resolved to raise the anti-sleaze banner against Douglas Hogg, but he seems to have run away already. Of course, by-elections may alter the equation, but otherwise I should be interested to hear any suggestions.

Tim Ireland, incidentally, has done Nadine Dorries up like a kipper.

http://www.bloggerheads.com/

Michael Martin was a rotten speaker, pushed into the job by New Labour because he is the loyalist’s loyalist, having never shown any evidence that he can think. He was never qualified for the job in any way.

But the sight of the troughing toffs ganging up to make a ritual sacrifice of a pleb in the hope that the news agenda will then “move on”, is deeply unedifying.

If this were sufficient of a constitutional crisis for the extreme measure of sacking a Speaker, it is certainly sufficient for the resignation as MPs of the worst individual troughers.

A general election will be best. But unless there are at the very least several by-elections, the MPs who pressured Martin to go will be revealed as simple hypocrites and scapegoat-tetherers.

Seems that Peter McKay at The Daily Mail has read The Catholic Orangemen of Togo. He published my anecdote about Prince Philip’s views on MPs, a few hours before I did!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1183970/PETER-MCKAY-Crown-sits-uneasy-crisis.html

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/prince_philip_o.html

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/

From The Catholic Orangemen of Togo, p. 132, on the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit to the Ghanaian parliament:

“The Prince laughed heartily, and we arrived at the Parliament building in high good spirits.

There he was first shown to a committee room where he was introduced to senior MPs of all parties.

“How many Members of Parliament do you have?” he asked.

“Two hundred,” came the answer.

“That’s about the right number,” opined the Prince, “We have six hundred and fifty MPs, and most of them are a complete bloody waste of time.”

Perhaps Prince Philip had a point.

The striking MP troughing story today is about MP Ben Chapman, who was allowed to continue claiming his mortgage payments despite having paid off his £279,000 mortgage. This still shocks despite eleven solid days of this.

One fascinating thing is just how many MPs appear to have been able to pay off their large mortgages, despite only having a salary of £68,000 per year. That speaks volumes.

Let us pause to remember the biggest criminal in the House of Commons, Tessa Jowell, who not only paid off her mortgage, but did so three times, using Mafia money.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2006/02/normality_and_t.html

Hopefully we will see what Jpwell’s expenses claims looked like during this fascinating period.

Most of you appear to read this blog at work, as readership drops at the weekend. So please do look at this piece I did on the really appalling hypocrisy of Tory blogger Iain Dale.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/iain_dale_is_a.html#comments

Iain has the number 1 blog on the Wikio rankings. If people want to read blogs that are simply a vehicle for party propaganda, that of course is their right. But I would hate people to be under the illusion they were getting anything more thoughtful or independent just because it is a new media fomat.

Nadine Dorries’ admission that she deliberately concealed from her constituents that she lives neither in London nor in her constituency, is appalling. Dale and Dorries are close – he was recently her escort and guest to the Classical Brit awards at the Royal Albert Hall (another freebie for the tireless trougher Dorries?). But his defence of Dorries, when he viciously attacks non-Tory MPs for the same kind of offence, shows Dale up for what he is.

Dale is in fact a double hypocrite. Having defended Dorries for claiming £22,000 a year for a constituency home when her main home is in the Cotswolds, but attacked Labour’s Margaret Moran for a similar offence, he then lays in to the Telegraph editor for defending his own friends:

The allegation is that the Telegraph went soft on Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper because Telegraph editor Will Lewis is a drinking and Karaoke buddy of Mr Balls.

When Dale himself had done precisely that for his friend Dorries! The truth is that both Lewis and Dale are both part of an intricately connected metropolitan clique who lord it over the rest of us.

And Dale then goes on to produce a self-righteous ten point candidates’ pledge of his own, which includes:

I will continue to live in the constituency, among the community I serve

Looks like your pledge would exclude Dorries then Iain, doesn’t it?

http://www.iaindale.blogspot.com/

Another one of Dale’s ten personal pledges reveals the weasel nature of his words.

I will be a full time MP with no jobs outside politics

Note the “No jobs outside politics”. Dale has managed to make a good living from hoovering up various streams of Tory gravy for years. Plainly he intends to maintain these income streams inside politics if elected.

Or he would pledge:

“I will be a full time MP with no other job”, full stop.

The real problem is, that the astounding hypocrisy of Dale’s defence of Dorries while hammering Margaret Moran for essentially the same offence, shows he is completely biased towards a Tory, to the exclusion of thoughts of natural justice. And that must cast into severe doubt another one of his candidates’ pledges:

I will serve all my constituents, regardless of their politics

Only serve the Tories rather better than others, one might suspect from the Dorries case.

For a party hack, Dale is remarkably thin-skinned. He commented on my post:

And all because I linked to a post by Charles Crawford which you didn’t like.

I thought you were bigger than this. But clearly not.

Why do you always have to be so personal. “Stinking hypocrite”. No reasoning. Just insults.

I used to really think you were a person worth reading and engaging with. I no longer do.

How very sad you have reduced your blog to this level.

Actually, this has nothing at all to do with Iain linking to Charles Crawford. I was not in the least upset by that. In fact, I was so not upset by it, I’ll do it myself. Here is Charles’ criticism of me:

http://charlescrawford.biz/N5A207442111

Charles has a different political view to mine. We argue fiercely. But he is logical and consistent, and I rather like him.

I am very straightforward, Iain. When I say that you are acting hypocritically, it is because I believe you are acting hypocritically, not because you linked to Charles Crawford.

I have contempt for your view that it is wrong for political opponents to do something, but OK for your friend Nadine Dorries to do the same thing. I have invited you to expound on your defence of Dorries and explain why what Dorries did was morally better than what you (rightly) condemned Margaret Moran for.

Oh, and of course I don’t mean that you smell by calling you a stinking hypocrite. The use of metaphors from smell to describe particularly evident bad behaviour is ancient. As in Shakespeare’s Claudius:

“Oh, my offence is rank. It smells to Heaven!”

.

One of the things I really do miss about the privileged existence I gave up, is the National Liberal Club. Seated with a book in a deep leather armchair by a roaring fire on a cold day, you could watch the shades of Gladstone, Lloyd George and the young Churchill stroll by.

In the Gent’s there is a cartoon of Tory wit FE Smith. The caption informs us that he would saunter, after a good few drinks, from his law practice at the Middle Temple to the Commons, often stopping at the National Liberal Club to use the lavatory. Some members complained, and one day he was stopped in the foyer by the porter:

“Excuse me sir, you do realise this is a private members’ club?”

Smith looked around him and sniffed:

“A club? I didn’t realise it was a club as well!”

Anyway, I really miss the place. I was a member for well over twenty years but I can no longer afford the fees. But why I recall the NLC now, is that it was specifically built following the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884, to provide accommodation for working class Liberal MPs who could not afford a second home in London.

Sadly the bedrooms were sold off a few years back to the Royal Horseguards hotel, but surely this is the way to go? Out of London MPs should be provided with the use of a small flat in a dedicated block at public expense. That, their salary and travel to their constituency should be all they are given. I can see no evidence to suggest that the quite excessive office and staff budgets they have nowadays, have done anything to increase the quality of government.

Nadine Dorries, Tory MP, has admitted she claimed her constituency home as her “Second home” for the purposes of claiming vast expenses. So where was her first home? In the Cotswolds, apparently.

Astonishingly, Nadine admits deliberately concealing from her constituents that she did not live either in her constituency or near Parliament.

Nadine Dorries says:

I never wanted my constituents to think that I had another prime responsibility other than Bedfordshire and Parliament; maybe I should have been more open.

http://blog.dorries.org/Blogs/2009/May/16#16

How her constituents will react to being deliberately duped is an interesting question.

So what Nadine is doing is just the same as Margaret Moran is doing. Nadine is basing her claims on having two residences, one of which is neither in the constituency, nor in London. In each case, which they choose to claim on is based on which will bring in more money.

Now to Iain Dale. I already pointed out that in the case of flipping by cheap far right propagandist Michael Gove MP, Dale and other Tory bloggers suddenly had different standards to when they were dealing with identical troughing by New Labour.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/the_breathtakin.html#comments

Iain Dale waxed furious over the “Shamelessness” of Margaret Moran. He fumed that her second home was

100 miles from her constituency and nowhere near Westminster.

Now then, Nadine Dorries’ first home is

100 miles from her constituency and nowhere near Westminster.

thus allowing her to put in huge claims on her constituency home.

So presumably Iain Dale regards Nadine Dorries as shameless, yes?

No. Because she is a Tory, and a mate of his.

I don’t condemn Nadine because unlike you I know the full details of her living arrangements and they fully comply with the rules, as she will be making clear in a further post.

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6214838&postID=2915940623081992628

(11.57 pm at 15 May on this comments stream).

Sickening, isn’t it? What a mighty blogging champion Iain Dale is! When it comes to New Labour, the tired formula of “Within the rules” is not good eonugh. But for his Tory friends, it is a complete exculpation.

Come on Iain, please give us a full explanation of exactly why it is fine for Nadine to do her job from the Cotswolds, 100 miles from both London and her constituency, while the taxpayer funds her large, plush constituency home.

You know, I obviously got it very wrong. I should have been Ambassador in Tashkent from a main Residence in Cannes. That would have been much more comfortable.

Tory blogs had become very popular as showing opposition to a rightly very unpopular governemt. But what the stupid, stupid, stupid thousand times hypocrite Dale shows is that the Tories are just the same kind of tribal predators as New Labour, simply itching for their turn to get their snouts in the trough.

Dale’s credibility as a blogger has been entirely compromised by his support for the Nadine Dorries scam. Actually, he’s only a Tory version of Michael White, with a thin veneer of good nature stretched over the hard party man.

Another Tory blogger, “Dizzy Thinks”, wrote a piece entitled “The Breathtaking Idiocy of Craig Murray”. Note that typically of a Tory, he knows so little of the Celtic nations that he can’t actually spell “Craig”.

http://dizzythinks.net/2009/05/breathtaking-idiocy-of-criag-murray.html

He also was attempting to defend the troughing of Tory MPs from my attack, and he decided the best way to do this was to attack me for being, as far as I can make out from his rant, a trendy environmentalist. He included this remarkable passage on his own virtues:

“I don’t eat organic food, nor drive a Prius. I have a 4×4 and love battery farmed eggs because they’re cheap.”

Which rather makes my point about Tory bloggers. Needled into showing their true colours.

There you have it officially from Dizzy. If you support the squandering of hydrocarbons as fast as possible, and keeping hens in 8inch by 8inch cages, then you probably should indeed vote Tory. If not, don’t vote Tory becuase you will be putting people like Dale and Dizzy in power.