10 July 2011

You committed the crime, you gotta do your time

One day very soon, I will get round to talking about phone hacking... just to say, for the moment, that the last 7 days of media coverage have been have been the most uplifting I can remember for probably a decade and a half.

But in the meantime, I have to say something about Paul White aka Lord Hanningfield, who has, fortunately, been sentenced to 9 months in prison for fiddling his expenses. The Essex Chronicle reports that Hanningfield is 'suicidal' and says "the only thing I can do is plunge a knife into my dog and then myself".

To which the response has to be: why kill a perfectly good dog?

We also learn from this Daily Mail piece that Hanningfield is still claiming £11,500 expenses allowance despite being in prison. He's entitled to do that until his appeal is heard later this month - but is it any wonder that people think the Tories are a gang of cheap, greedy killers when people like this guy are at the heart of the local Essex party? Funny how White wasn't suicidal when he was claiming for overnight accommodation during late-night House of Lords sittings he never attended....

Hanningfield was originally a pig farmer and presumably that's where he got addicted to walking through shit.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'd agree with your sentiments but lest we forget at least an equal number of expense cheats in the Commons were Labour Party MPs and the cheapest MP (Philip Hollobone of Kettering) was a Tory. In the Lords, as well, people such as former Soviet agent turned EU commissioner Lord Kinnock and the newly enobled Lord Prescott were first in at the trough. I need to check the expenses file for 'Mr.Ed', but I think both parties were equally culpable.