Tony McNulty - Übercunt.

There are times when the C bomb won't quite do on it's own, and this is one of them. Tony McNulty MP has apparently been on the ever popular second homes expenses fiddle.

Employment minister Tony McNulty claimed the money on the house in Harrow even though he moved out in 2002 and lives in Hammersmith, west London, with his wife.
But his spokesman says he still spends two or three days a week at his parents property doing constituency work and so was entitled to the allowance. He stopped claiming the expenses in January.
The Additional Costs Allowance, worth up to £24,000 a year, is paid to MPs from outside inner London to cover the cost of staying overnight away from their main home for the purpose of performing parliamentary duties.

It's got so commonplace now that my first reaction wasn't shock or outrage or disgust but "oh, another one".

A spokesman for Mr McNulty said the claims on the property in Harrow were entirely within the parliamentary rules on MPs' allowances.
Mr McNulty's spokesman said: "Tony is completely compliant with all the regulations around the allowances for second homes.
"There is absolutely nothing irregular in Tony's situation. Tony is entitled, like all MPs, to an allowance allowing him blahblahblah waffle spin zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"

Oh shut the fuck up. We'll take the pathetic technically-within-the-rules excuses as read if it means not having to hear the same old shit from another MP's mouthpiece to justify him or her milking the taxpayer. Obviously Tony McNulty (or a mouthpiece) isn't going to make a public statement along the lines of there was a nice loophole and there was money in it, so it's more or less at the stage where'd I'd rather just not fucking hear anything from him. It's going to be an excuse - enough said.

After moving into her home in Hammersmith, west London, he claimed the second home allowance on the Harrow property, receiving around £60,000 since 2001/2, while his parents continued to live there.
In January this year he decided to stop claiming the allowance as interest rates had fallen so far that he found he was able to meet his mortgage commitments from his MP's salary, said his spokesman.

Oh that's fucking big of him. And I'm sure it had nothing to do with increasing scrutiny of expenses around that time and any sense he had that the game might be up before long if he kept at it. It's been said many times by many people - what a corrupt and venal bunch of bastards they are in Westminster.

That on it's own might make McNulty a cunt for some, but as I said my initial reaction wasn't particularly strong. It's like finding another Premiership footballer that's been diving to get penalties or opposing players carded. Shouldn't happen and if honest people were running things it fucking wouldn't because the bastards that do it would be out on their arses. Unfortunately there are few honest people in Westminster and, since I'd guess that 20 million or more people have some sort of Pavlovian response to elections and cast their vote for anyone or anything with the right rosette while two fifths don't vote at all, it's likely to stay that way for a while. So tactical use of the expenses may be cuntish from the perspective of how much money the taxpayer is bled for just to keep Parliamentarians comfy, it's not especially shocking when so many of them are at it in some way or another. What made him a standout among cunts for me was something quite unrelated to the usual stuff and involved paying tribute to a loathed loved loathed loved Zzzzzz-list 'celeb' who's just snuffed it:

Mr McNulty said he "regretted" Jade's comment that she wanted to earn enough money before she died for her children to go to private schools, insisting that there were many good schools in the state sector.

Can we just go over a few facts about the lat semi-lamented Jade goody for the benefit of Tony McNulty.

She thought Cambridge was part of London

She thought "East Angular" was a foreign country instead of the area of England where Cambridge really is.

She thought that Rio de Janeiro played football.

She said after being hopeless in the London marathon that she didn't understand miles

She thought a ferret was a bird.

She thought Saddam Hussein was a boxer.

And, most relevant of all, she had a state education.

Now it's quite possible that Jade Goody wasn't on the receiving end of a lousy education but was simply dumb as a rock. Or it might be that her education was fucking appalling and she might have been less ignorant of, well, everything apparently if someone had actually taught her things. I've no idea which it was McNumpty, but if she was prepared to hawk her own death to the tabloids to fund the private education of her kids I can make a guess about what she thought. And what a fucking time to trot out the predictable socialist dogma about state education. Not even Broon is that crass. Jade Goody was a media whore right up to the end, but compared to someone who parasitises the taxpayer to the tune of 60 grand and then criticizes the not-yet-room-temperature Goody for her ambitions for her children a media whore doesn't seem so bad after all. Better that than an übercunt.


UPDATE: Unsurprisingly Guido's on this too, and points out that Mrs McNumpty is also feeding off the taxpayer's back since she works for a quango. Oink oink.