Gravy train derailment - repairs underway

The troughing bastards are still at it, and again we see that there's little difference between the dishonourable members on one side of the Commons and those on the other.

Richard Benyon is one of the richest MPs in Parliament. The great-great-grandson of three-times Tory Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, he can trace his ancestry back to William Cecil, the chief political adviser to Elizabeth I.
Tory MP Mr Benyon, the Environment and Fisheries Minister, has received income from a family trust which owns a 20,000-acre estate worth £125 million.
...
Farming Minister Jim Paice has also received several thousands of pounds in EU subsidies for his farm in Cambridgeshire over the same ten-year period.

Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper have been referred to the parliamentary sleaze watchdog after claiming more than £14,000 in travel expenses for their children.
The Shadow Chancellor and his wife, the Shadow Home Secretary, have claimed for 375 journeys for their three children between 2007 and 2010.
MPs are limited to 30 travel-expenses claims per child a year. But because Mr Balls and Miss Cooper are married, they can claim for twice as many free trips for their children as other MPs with young families.
The Labour couple have claimed for 105 more journeys than a family with three children would be permitted if only one parent was an MP.

In the case of the two Tories you'd think that even a whiff of a conflict of interest would have a sensible party leadership making effort to put those people in other jobs. And as for Mr and Mrs Blinky's claims, why the hell do MPs even get one travel claim per year per child, never mind fucking thirty? Are the children the MPs? No. Do other people get to expense travel for their children? Pretty fucking rarely I imagine.

A spokesman for the couple said they take their children to and fro because obviously neither of them has a wife or husband who can stay behind to look after them.

Look, if arranging the job around your children and vice versa make being an MP difficult - and I'm quite sure it does a lot of the time - then one or both of you probably shouldn't fucking be one. Well, I'd say both of you for entirely unrelated reasons obviously, but you know what I mean.

He pointed out that the House of Commons paid the equivalent of 22 round trips for the children last year and that, unlike other MPs, they do not claim for spouses travel which other MPs can.

No, because they're both claiming as MPs. Good one, eh?

Labour MP Sharon Hodgson, the shadow children’s minister, said: ‘The thing I’ve always respected about Ed and Yvette is that while they have been in the public eye they’ve always protected their children and kept them out of politics.
‘So this is a desperate new low from the Tories to try to drag their children into a political fight.
'Ed and Yvette have to be in Parliament and their constituencies each week and they also take their family responsibilities very seriously.
Who on earth does Mr Bridgen think is supposed to look after their children if they have to leave them behind in London or Yorkshire? He isn’t living in the real world.’

And you are, are you, Sharon? Well... no, actually, because they fucking don't have to at all, you witless bitch. Neither of them were forced at gunpoint to become MPs in the way British taxpayers are forced at gunpoint to continue to pay for them. Neither have a gun to their heads forcing them to carry on doing it. Either of them could stop at any time. "Taking their family responsibilities seriously" my sweaty arse.

Of course, just like the Tory troughers they're only taking advantage of what's on offer and I'm certain that it's all above board and within the rules. So much fucking easier to do when you help write the fucking rules, isn't it?

Bastards, the fucking lot of them.