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26 May 2009
A sends:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/23/dorries-tory-mp-blog-taken-down
[Excerpts]
Nadine Dorries, the Conservative frontbencher who claimed the Daily Telegraph's revelations on expenses could drive MPs to suicide, has had her blog shut down by lawyers acting for the newspaper.
The virtually unprecedented action against a serving MP came after Dorries was disowned by her party leader, David Cameron, and described as "wacky" by senior Conservative sources. She had claimed that MPs were being "tortured" by the Telegraph's dripfeed of revelations.
The newspaper is understood to have acted after she made further allegations concerning the motivation of the newspaper's proprietors, Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay. Withers, the lawyers acting for the Barclay brothers, are understood to have instructed the takedown, invoking the acceptable user policy used by internet service providers to protect themselves against libel action provoked by comments on websites they host.
The removed blog from Google cache:
[Excerpts; offending message at Winners or Losers? below. The full blog from Google cache: http://cryptome.org/dorries-blog-full.zip (780KB).]
This is Google's cache of http://blog.dorries.org/Blogs/2009/May/22. It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on 22 May 2009 11:56:13 GMT. The current page could have changed in the meantime. Learn more
Comments
Posted Friday, 22 May 2009 at 11:40
I'm taking them off for the Bank Holiday weekend. Sorry!
http://blog.dorries.org/Blogs/2009/May/22#22
Comment Comments so far 0
What Stephan said and Martin Bell knew
Posted Friday, 22 May 2009 at 10:22
During an interview on the R4 Today programme (and about a dozen times since) I said the following - ish:
" No Prime Minister has ever had the political courage to award MPs an appropriate level of pay commensurate with their experience, qualifications and position; as recommended by the SSRB, year after year.
Prior to my intake in 2005, MPs were sat down by the establishment and told that the ACA was an allowance, not an expense, it was the MP's property, in lieu of pay; and the job of the fees office was to help them claim it."
Whatever opinion you may have about that, and I have my own, you cannot ignore the fact that this was the system put into place, because no Prime Minister ever, including my heroine, has had the political courage to address the issue. Everyone in the political and media world knew it.
At a drinks party the other evening, I had a conversation with Stephan Shakespeare the owner of YouGov. I put to him that MPs prior to my intake had been told for many years that the ACA was in lieu of pay.
"Yes, we have all known that" said Stephan. "Everyone knows that, the question is how do you move forward, what will be put in its place?"
When Stephan said "we all" what he meant of course, was the political and media establishment.
The BBC knew it. Every single journalist knew it. The interviewer on the Today programme this morning, who interviewed me, knew it; and Martin Bell probably knew it because he was given the same rule book as everyone else, when he became an MP 12 years ago. He was also, allegedly, the best friend of the Labour party as detailed in Alastair Campbell's diaries.
The system was a disgrace, an appalling disgrace; but it was the system and everyone knew it.
If MPs prior to 2005 were sat down and told "this is your pot of money with your name on it, and our job is to make sure you have it as it's really part of your salary," what difference does it make what it was spent on? They had been told it was their money - their salary. It was the wrong way to do things; but it was how it was done, and been done for a long, long time - MPs knew no different.
The technique deployed by the Telegraph, picking off a few MPs each day, emailing at 12 giving five hours notice to reply, recording the conversation, not allowing them to speak, shouting over them when they try to explain, telling them they are going to publish anyway, at day 15, is amounting to a form of torture and may have serious consequences.
MPs are human beings like everyone else. They have families too. McCarthyite witch hunts belong to the past, not the present. As do archaic, cowardly, methods of pay.
If MPs are guilty, so are those who knew the system was in place, including the Telegraph journalists who have now decided for their own political reasons to expose the system, in a way which profits the Telegraph, for their own reasons.
http://blog.dorries.org/Blogs/2009/May/22#22
Comment Comments so far 3
Posted Thursday, 21 May 2009 at 17:04
Just park a couple of facts for a moment, which you may not agree with but are factual.
The first is that MPs have always been encouraged, by whatever means possible, to draw down their ACA allowance in full. This is because it was upped in place of an appropriate pay rise.
The rules surrounding the ACA were deliberately sloppy in order to maximise the opportunity that MPs had to draw.
This was always felt to be the safest political method to remunerate MPs, rather than face the media backlash of a pay rise.
Parliament is in chaos. The public are angry. The Telegraph has upped its circulation.
There are 650 members of Parliament. In any walk of life, in whatever profession, you will find people who are dishonest. It will always be thus as long as we are all human!
The Telegraph are uncovering a few cases of fraud, but not enough, so they are more than slightly embellishing some of the stories. I write as a case in point.
Enter the Barclay brothers, the billionaire owners of The Daily Telegraph.
Rumour is that they are fiercely Euro sceptic and do not feel that either of the main parties are Euro sceptic enough. They have set upon a deliberate course to destabilise Parliament, with the hope that the winners will be UKIP and BNP.
A quick online check of the Barclay brothers and their antics on the Island of Sark is enough to give this part of the rumour credence.
Another rumour is that the disc was never acquired and sold by an amateur, but it was in fact a long term undercover operation run by the Telegraph for some considerable time, carefully planned and executed; and that the stories of the naive disc nabber ringing the news desk in an attempt to sell the stolen information are entirely the work of gossip and fiction.
These rumours do have some credibility given that this has all erupted during the European Election Campaign and turn out is expected to be high with protest votes, courtesy of the Daily Telegraph, or should I say the Barclay brothers.
Now, if this is all a power game executed by the BBs, how would they do that?
It is a fact that these men are no fools and are in fact self-made billionaires.
I would imagine and believe that if any of this is true, they know the British psyche well enough to whip up a mood of public anger, hence the long running revelations in the DT.
Where do I get this from? Well, at heart I am just a cheeky scouser. I like to go into the rooms of the faceless and nameless in Parliament, sit on their desk and ask pertinent questions like: who are you? What do you do? I've made friends with one or two. One in particular I am very fond of. He is a mine of very astute information; and whilst in his office yesterday, we chunnered over the 'what is this all about?' question.
He reckons this is all a power game. That the British public are being worked like puppets by two very powerful men. Whipped up into a frenzy to achieve exactly what they want.
His very poignant words to me were “if any of this conjecture is true, Parliament will become full of racists, fantasists, and has-been celebrities. We will be rendered impotent and may never again regain the authority to withstand the pressure, opinion and whims of the overtly wealthy.â€
Scary stuff!
http://blog.dorries.org/Blogs/2009/May/21#21
Comment Comments so far 17
Clarification
Posted Thursday, 21 May 2009 at 11:12
I've finished going through all my receipts and thought I had better make some things crystal clear:
I do NOT own a home in South Africa.
I do NOT own a home from which I receive a rental income.
I do rent a home/office in my constituency which is paid for by the ACA. The Green Book rules state ' if an MPs designated main home is not in either London or the constituency the ACA can be used to buy or rent in either'.
There is no stipulation on nights to be spent in either location.
I chose to rent in the constituency and not buy.
I do, from my own money, pay for a rental property I have designated as my main home. It is near the former marital home where my children were born and went to school; and where my youngest lived permanently, and attended school until September 2008.
I will buy again when the market settles down.
I have not used the ACA to buy furniture, sofas, plasma screen TVs, gardening, decorating, home repairs or any luxury items.
I did use it to buy a cooker, table dryer, desk, computer table and storage boxes from Ikea as one off relocation costs in the first year.
I furnished the house with items from my main home, a couple of donations from my mother, and beds that I paid for myself from John Lewis.
I have not claimed the £400 per month food allowance.
I have not claimed the £250 petty cash each month.
I have purchased and lost two digital cameras at two garden fetes and broken a Sat Nav.
We have ordered chocolate biscuits and tea bags with our stationary rather than using petty cash.
I used a chartered accountant to make sure that HMRC received my correct tax payments.
That's it.
The atmosphere in Westminster is unbearable. People are constantly checking to see if others are ok. Everyone fears a suicide. If someone isn't seen, offices are called and checked.
All because this country has never had a Prime Minister with the political courage to stand up to the British media, and award MPs the pay rise proposed year after year, by the Senior Salary Review Board.
Year after year the salary stayed the same; but the allowances were increased, were called allowances, not expenses, and MPs were told to use them.
I wonder how many people are aware, that if you are an MP and divorce, the courts base your maintenance payments to your husband/wife/children on a combination of your ACA and your salary.
This is because the ACA is classed as an allowance, not an expense account, and is considered by the court as the property of the MP.
An interesting legal point. One of the confusing facts, which has got us into this mess.
No MP must ever, ever have to vote for his or her salary again; and no Prime Minister should ever have the power to use MPs' pay as a political pawn.
Hopefully the good which will come from this will be radical reform, which will prevent such a disaster ever occurring again.
http://blog.dorries.org/Blogs/2009/May/21#21
Comment Comments so far 14