This entry was posted on
Friday, June 6th, 2008 at
9:47 am and is filed
under Tories! Tories! Tories!.
Guardian – Tories’ Brussels enforcer quits over half-million in expenses: Giles Chichester, who three months ago was charged by David Cameron with the role of ensuring that Tory MEPs were behaving scrupulously, stood down in Brussels after being found, over the past 12 years, to have transferred the funds, which came from MEP’s allowances, to a company of which he was a director. On Wednesday, Chichester had resisted quitting his post, though he confessed to a “whoops-a-daisy” moment, stating that he had failed to understand the rules…
Sorry, but if you’re the guy in charge of making sure that others understand and follow the rules, you can’t break the rules and then say “whoops” and expect to get away with it.
And what fun it is to watch David Cameron charging around in the hope that his velocity alone will cast the egg from his face.
(I know it’s a show, because on a number of occasions Cameron has offered Anne Milton a free ride on clear wrongdoings – example – just because it didn’t look like it would cost him anything at the time. No fuss = no action.)
[Psst! Watch the Conservatives’ top attack blogger calling for calm. The partisan twit.]
By tory boys never grow June 6, 2008 - 1:25 pm
Interesting that Dale decided not to produce this posting of mine."I think that many are missing the point here. Why are these MEPs paying the expenses into companies rather than directly to their wives/children/mistresses or whatever, especially given that the company route has all the hassle and expense of forming and running a company? The companies even have to be audited – so presumably their auditors were asking the basis question as to whether the income received from the EU was being spent in the manner intended.I suspect the answer lies in that the companies were being used a device to reduce income tax paid by the wives/children/mistresses on their earnings (and increase the taxes paid by everyone else). Strangely enough whenever the Government has made proposals to stop such abuse the Conservative Party has nearly always opposed them without fail.It might also be very interesting to look at the Companies VAT returns – but not sure of the VAT status of payments received from the EU.Why are they using corporate structures which in theory are more transparent than direct payments??"Obviously his definition of abusive includes embarassing for all his friends at CCHQ and my guess is probably near to the truth that they are trying to avoid by Cameron's whiter than white act.
By tory boys never grow June 6, 2008 - 1:56 pm
Take it all back re Dale's censorship on this occaision – he has now published my post
By Professor Paul June 7, 2008 - 8:15 pm
I'm really enjoying watching Iain flip flop on this one.He makes ONE good point.IGNORANCE IS NOT AN EXCUSE!