Thanks to jaxxlanders for drawing our attention to the report in the Mirror about claims on the public purse some of our richest MPs make for heating their homes. Top of the list must be Nadhim Zahawi, "a millionaire Tory who claimed a staggering £5,822 in just 12 months – more than four times the average household energy bill – to power and heat his £1million constituency home in a sprawling 31-acre estate. [...] The Stratford-upon-Avon MP even boasts on his website of his 'achievements' on the Energy Bill Committee at improving 'energy efficiency measures to homes and businesses'."
However, neighbouring Labour MP, ex-cabinet minister Peter Hain, is not far behind. He has claimed £4,571 on his Ynysygerwn property which he has designated as his second home. He said he had no choice because the property only uses expensive heating oil.
This is in spite of the solar panels which he had installed, aided I believe by the limited grants which were then available. (For more background, see the Telegraph's original report on the expenses scandal.) Mr Hain has been prominent in recent years in speaking out in favour of a Severn Barrage promoted by his wife.
2 comments:
I am most impressed by Mr Hain's progress in the world of politics, money and success. I remember him as the golden boy of doting parents. He then rose to sudden prominence by delivering the eulogy at the funeral of an executed addle-brained urban bomber (whose 'bag' consisted of one dead granny and her little granddaughter who suffered major burns from which she has still not recovered almost half a century later). With admiration I watched his rise to prominence by breaking up cricket matches and then doing a quick party-shuffle to prominence. I recall his roll in selling unwanted and unneeded armaments to an utterly corrupt South African administration. In fairness, it should be said that he and the Blair Administration he served so loyally received no bribes. It is only alleged that they PAID bribes to a corrupt African administration. Why is he now being criticised for wanting a nice warm home? Don't we all? How is he to know about the many impoverished Black families in South Africa who lack any kind of housing or heating because of the money squandered by their government on armaments it did not need (half of which is now permanently in cold storage)?
I've always been impressed by many aspects of the now generally reviled Welfare State. (What sane person of modest means would rather get seriously ill -- or indeed suffer any serious misfortune -- in the United States than in the UK or Canada?) But I seem to have Laboured under the wrong impression. I thought the recipients of the 'welfare' were the common people, not the wealthy Commons people. I live in a poor country where providing the poor with basic amenities (such as a modicum of warmth in winter)can quite literally be a matter of life and death. We have always seen British democracy as an example to follow. Our deeply corrupt government leaders will thus be mightily relieved to learn that it's their homes that need to be heated -- and air-conditioned, not those of the poor. Mr Hain has long been a loyal friend of the governing party down here, and I believe still is, a party which has been sinking ever deeper into corruption since Mandela retired as president. They would be encouraged by the fine example wealthy UK 'entrepreneurial' politicians are setting in the UK.
Herrie (Cape Town)
Post a Comment