I read today that dreadful MP Nadine Dorries is to appear on the ghastly TV show I’m a celebrity. Just out of interest: will she be drawing her MP’s salary and claiming any expenses when she troops off to the jungle with a bunch of C list celebs? I would hope not but I am afraid that Mad Nad has pretty good form on pushing the expenses system to its limits. Are her daughters still on the payroll? There will be those that say this spectacle degrades Westminster. I disagree.
Westminster is already degraded to such a point where politicians are held in almost universal contempt. At sleaze central, expenses have been systematically fiddled and few have been punished. Faced with slam dunk cases like Dennis MacShane the Police have yet to act. Baroness Uddin is acknowledged to have stolen £125,000 of taxpayers cash but after a year band from the house of Lords she is now back and opting to pay back that cash not by selling any one of her three houses but from her fees and expenses in the House of Lords. You could not make it up.
Almost half of our laws are now passed in the EU yet we are told that we still need 650 MPs, beavering away, to scrutinise legislation. I shall turn my attention to other matters and the cover up later today. Nadine Dorries does not make anyone view the political class with more contempt, the entire establishment is almost universally reviled already. No-one really thinks that many MPS do a serious job anyway so why not send the whole lot to the jungle? Would the UK be that much worse off? None the less, I shall still be keen to know if she is drawing a salary and claiming expenses as she heads off to celeb land.