Imagine you get a nice easy job, you
get paid for turning up, you can if you wish just sleep on and off
and hobble off to the bar now and again and it pays well. You start
to fiddle the expenses, get caught and sentenced to 9 months in
prison. You are released after 9 weeks and you wander back to your
old job, move in and carry on as if nothing had ever happened.
Fantasy? Well no, it is the rules in that club of pomp and privilege,
the House of Lords.
Take the case of one Paul White,
last year he got convicted of fraudulently claiming £14,000 worth of
false expenses at his place of work. Straight from prison after
serving nine weeks of a nine month sentence, back to his old job and
for the months of April and May he claimed £4,596 in expenses and
for June this year has claimed £3,600 in expenses. The June expenses
were for turning up on 12 seperate days at £300 a day, plus £285
travelling expenses. That's a total of £8,481, not bad for 3 months
part-time “work”.
How does he do it? Well he is one
of those privileged parasites who has those magic four little letters
in front of his name, “LORD” . Paul White, is better known as
Lord Hanningfield, and the House of Lords is his nice little earner,
of course it is tax payers money that he is pocketing and it is just
for turning up.
It's tough trying to adjust after prison.
However I don't want you to think
that Lord Hanningfield is alone as the only privileged benefit cheat.
His Lordy pal Lord Taylor of Warwick, not only a cheat, but a liar,
done for lying about where he lived and fiddling £11,000, served 3
months of a 12 month sentence, and in June this year his fingers were
in the honeypot again, claiming £2,100 in expenses.
Of course there
more of these members of this privileged parasite club that have fiddled
and the went back to business as usual. One Baroness Uddin, though
not prosecuted, was told to pay back fiddled expenses to the tune of
£125,349, has this June claimed £1,800 in attendance allowance.
Try to think of who you know in your neighbourhood, that might have
in some way fiddled at work, went to prison and then back to their
old job, no questions asked? So why do we tolerate a bunch of
parasites washed in pomp, privilege and impunity, all at our expense.