Fraudulent minister gets (metaphorical) slap on the wrist

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claim, commissioner, committee, David Cameron, equalities, equality, expense, fraud, hypocrisy, inquiry, John Mann, Maria Miller, minister, mortgage, Parliament, sack, standards

One law for them…: This image appeared on Twitter, summarising how the law treats MPs in comparison with the rest of us.

Fraudster – and Minister for Equalities – Maria Miller has been ordered to repay £5,800 and apologise to Parliament after an inquiry found she had over-claimed mortgage expenses.

In essence, she made fraudulent expenses claims that were not reduced to accommodate a fall in interest rates.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards launched an investigation into her behaviour after it was reported that, between 2005 and 2009, she had claimed £90,718 in Parliamentary expenses for the mortgage and upkeep of a south London house that was occupied, not by Mrs Miller, but by her parents.

The Commons Committee on Standards did what’s usually expected and cleared Miller of the central charge – deliberately submitting expenses claims to which she was not entitled. Instead, she is being penalised because her attitude to the inquiry breached the ministers’ code of conduct.

The committee rejected the charge that she or her parents had benefited financially from the arrangement. That’s very interesting, considering that Miller recently sold the south London house at the centre of the affair, making a profit of £1 million (according to the Daily Telegraph).

John Mann MP, whose complaint led to the inquiry being launched, has been tweeting on the subject. He says: “Miller forced to apologise for showing ‘completely inappropriate attitude to the inquiry’. Doesn’t take it seriously.

“Miller’s attitude will infuriate the public, who have had enough of expenses scandals and MPs’ arrogance. David Cameron will be accused of hypocrisy if he does not sack Maria Miller today.”

He’s right – look at this representative tweet from ‘Amy’: “MP Maria Miller expected to repay thousands in overpaid expenses & make an apology. If she was a benefit claimant she would be jailed.”

Mr Mann’s own article about it can be found here.

If Miller had been arrested and put on crown court trial for fraud (as seems likely, considering the “legalistic” way she tried to defend herself against the Parliamentary commissioner’s inquiries), she could have been imprisoned for up to 10 years. That is what happens to other people. But Parliament looks after its own.

Do you think that is fair?

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Cameron’s ‘mission’ is morally bankrupt

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allowance, attack, bankrupt, benefit, bishop, catholic, claimant count, Coalition, Conservative, Customs, David Cameron, death, debt, deficit, Department, destitute, destitution, dole, DWP, employment, ESA, evidence, expense, fraud, government, health, HM Revenue, hmrc, holiday, hope, hunger, Iain Duncan Smith, IB, IDS, Incapacity Benefit, Job Centre Plus, jobseeker, long term economic plan, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, mission, moral, mortality, national Statistics, office, ONS, opportunity, overpaid, overpayment, pension, Pensions, people, politics, punitive, purpose, Reform, responsibility, returned to unit, right, RTU, safety net, sanction, self employ, social security, support, Tories, Tory, travel, Universal Credit, Vincent Nichols, Vox Political, welfare, Westminster, work, Workfare, Working Tax Credit

When David Cameron stands up in all his hypocrisy and tells you that tearing apart the basic safety net that guaranteed people would not be left in hunger or destitution is part of his “moral mission”, even die-hard Tories should agree that the country has taken a turn for the worse.

When he defends an administration that has become so punitive that applicants who don’t get it right have to wait without food for months at a time, by claiming he is doing “what is right”, even die-hard Tories should agree that the man who claims he is Prime Minister has diverged from reality.

That is precisely what he has done, and you can bet that the Tory diehards will quietly go along with it because they think it is far better for other people to lose their lives than it is for their government to lose face.

Cameron has been responding after the Catholic Bishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, delivered a vehement attack on the social security “reforms” being forced on the country’s most vulnerable people by Iain Duncan Smith.

In the Daily Telegraph, Cameron smarmed: “Our long-term economic plan for Britain is not just about doing what we can afford, it is also about doing what is right… Nowhere is that more true than in welfare. For me the moral case for welfare reform is every bit as important as making the numbers add up.

“We are in the middle of a long and difficult journey turning our country around,” Cameron said. “That means difficult decisions to get our deficit down, making sure that the debts of this generation are not our children’s to inherit.

“But our welfare reforms go beyond that alone – they are about giving new purpose, new opportunity, new hope – and yes, new responsibility to people who had previously been written off with no chance.

“Seeing these reforms through is at the heart of our long-term economic plan – and it is at the heart too of our social and moral mission in politics today.”

Drivel. Any evidence-based analysis will find the exact opposite. Where are the opportunities in Workfare schemes that pay only benefits, meaning travel expenses alone put claimants out of pocket, and then send jobseekers back to the dole queue so rich companies can profit further by taking on more claimants on the same terms?

How can anyone derive hope from taking responsibility for their job search, when DWP staff at Jobcentre Plus are ordered to ignore their own responsibilities in favour of harsh sanctions for invented infringements of the Jobseeker’s Agreement?

And how is encouraging people to say they are self-employed, even though they have little chance of earning enough to support them and none of enjoying a holiday or a pension, different from writing them off with no chance?

Look at the new employment figures from the Office for National Statistics – the Coalition government has been making a song and dance about them ever since they came out. On the face of it, they seem reliable: In December 2013, 30.15 million people were in work of some kind, up by 396,000 from the same time the previous year; there were 2.34 million unemployed, down 161,000 from December 2012; and the Claimant Count (those on Jobseekers’ Allowance) was 1.22 million in January, down 327,000 from a year earlier.

However, the number of people marked as self-employed has rocketed to a record level, totalling one in seven of the workforce. That’s 4,370,000 – up 150,000 on the previous year. This is extremely suspicious, as the increase in the previous year totalled 25,000 – just one-sixth of this week’s figure.

Some of these people might be genuinely self-employed and making their new business work – but all of them? In an economy where productivity hasn’t increased since the Coalition took office? You’d have to be stupid to believe that.

Assuming the amount of real self-employment has increased in line with economic growth (at 1.9 per cent), that’s an extra 25,475 in 2013, leaving 124,525 in limbo. Are these really self-employed? Or were they told by Jobcentre advisors to say so and claim working tax credits (as we’ve seen in the past), leading to a huge debt when HMRC tells them they have been claiming fraudulently and have been overpaid?

How many of the unemployed have been wiped off the books due to sanctions? We don’t know, because we don’t have figures up to December 2013. We do know that 897,690 sanctions were enforced in the year to September 2013. We don’t know how many were for one month, how many for three months or how many for three years, but we do know that the rate was six per cent of jobseekers per month in the three months to the end of September 2013. Assuming that rate stayed solid, it suggests that 73,200 were off-benefit due to sanctions in December and should be added to the Claimant Count to give a more accurate figure.

How many of the unemployed have been wiped off the books due to Workfare? We don’t know. How many are unemployed but on Universal Credit, which isn’t included in the Claimant Count? We don’t know – 3,610 were on it at the end of November last year, but the DWP has not divided them into those in work and those without.

David Cameron has access to all of this information, and he doesn’t care. He also has access to the mortality figures for claimants of Incapacity Benefit/Employment and Support Allowance, that the DWP has been withholding from the rest of us, probably for fear of sparking an international outcry. He doesn’t care about that either.

His comments are therefore doubly outrageous – not only is he claiming that his Coalition’s changes are having a beneficial effect when the figures demonstrate the opposite, but he is also claiming the moral high ground when his actions are more appropriate to the populace of the Pit.

In terms of his morality, there can be only one description for him and his cronies:

Bankrupt.

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Osborne update: Standards commissioner ignores the facts

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account, code, commissioner, conduct, duty, evidence, expense, farm, fraud, George Osborne, harrop fold, house, inquiry, Interest, land registry, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, mortgage, paddock, Parliamentary, profit, report, responsibility, rules, standards, taxpayer, Vox Political

Oily Osborne has slithered away from any chance of a fraud investigation by the standards commissioner, but he will have to live with the allegation for the rest of his career.

I believe I am one of many who received an email from the office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards yesterday, turning down the call for an inquiry into possible expenses fraud by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Those of you who received it will be familiar with the wording. For those who didn’t, the relevant parts run as follows:

“The Commissioner has not accepted a complaint about Rt Hon George Osborne MP. There is therefore no current inquiry into Mr Osborne’s conduct.   “As you know, before she could inquire into allegations against a Member, the Commissioner would need evidence, sufficient to support an inquiry, that the Member might have breached the Code of Conduct and the rules of the House. The rules on Members’ overnight expenses have been tightened considerably since Mr Osborne’s original expenses claims, and the Commissioner would assess the allegations against the rules as they were at the time of the alleged conduct. Without evidence of a breach of those rules, which had not already been inquired into, the Commissioner would not open an investigation.”

Mine continued: “I am afraid I am unable to say what the police meant by their comments,” referring to my complaint to the Metropolitan Police and the strange response that it was being investigated elsewhere.

My first reaction was: How much evidence does the commissioner need? If he’s a villain, he’s hardly likely to sign a confession! We know Osborne claimed against his mortgage on the property in Cheshire and we know that the mortgage was for three land titles, not one. Therefore we deduce that he claimed money for Parliamentary duties taking place on at least two pieces of land where such duties could never have taken place, and the prima facie evidence (as the police would say) suggests further investigation is required.

Do we even have proof that Osborne ever actually used the Cheshire farmhouse to carry out Parliamentary duties? Whenever I have claimed expenses for a job, I have always had to produce proof of it. How has he used that house? When did he use that house? Where is the proof? If he met constituents, my understanding is that he used the Conservative office in the same building as the local Conservative Club (which is to close through lack of funding; interesting that Osborne is making out like a bandit while his local party suffers). Could he have travelled up from London, held those meetings, and travelled back within the same day? If so, then the farmhouse and the two pieces of land are now looking increasingly like long-term investments, maintained at cost to the taxpayer, that were to be sold at a later date for huge profit (as, in fact, they were).

Second reaction was: If the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner cannot investigate an open-and-shut fraud case (which is what this is) then what is the point of the office as it currently stands? On balance, it seems likely that Members of Parliament can continue to commit abuses of public money – and trust – and get away, free as a bird, in the current system. Therefore, with this decision it seems the commissioner, who only took up the post this month, is attempting a tacit resignation from it.

Let’s have a standards watchdog that actually investigates and prevents abuses, shall we? Maybe I’ll start an e-petition.

Third reaction was: Without a full and frank investigation, Osborne will always stand accused of expenses fraud and of abusing the trust placed in him as a member of Parliament. So, in fact, the commissioner has done him a great disservice. Mud always sticks, as the old saying goes. There’s no smoke without fire.

There’s no stink without a stinker, and in this case the odour can emanate from nobody else but Osborne.

He’ll never be able to live it down. And he’ll never be able to say that nobody raised the issue, because we have.

I think I might have a bit more work to do. For Osborne himself, as Churchill once said, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Osborne update – are they kicking his paddock into the long grass?

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account, code, commissioner, conduct, duty, evidence, expense, farm, fraud, George Osborne, harrop fold, house, inquiry, Interest, land registry, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, mortgage, paddock, Parliamentary, profit, report, responsibility, rules, standards, taxpayer, Vox Political

Is the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards going to let Osborne get away with using taxpayers’ money in a get-rich-quick property scheme, and then pocketing the profits? Only you can make him think again. It seems clear that if he committed fraud he should be jailed.

Efforts to find out exactly why George Osborne was allowed to make up to £1 million by using taxpayers’ money to pay mortgage interest on three properties in Cheshire, while fraudulently claiming he needed it to pay expenses for his use of just one of them for Parliamentary duties, appear to have run into difficulty.

I received this letter from the office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards:

“Thank you for your letter… to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. I have been asked to reply.

“I hope it will be helpful if I explain the role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. The Commissioner is able to inquire into complaints of a breach of both the Code of Conduct and the rules of the House only if they are supported by sufficient evidence to justify an inquiry.

“Your letter suggests that criminal conduct may have occurred. Any allegations of criminal behaviour would be a matter for the police, not for the Commissioner, and I note that you have reported this matter to them. Any police investigation would take precedence over the Commissioner’s inquiries.”

That’s not good enough, is it?

It makes no mention of what the commissioner is doing about the complaint and merely runs over ground that has been covered already, via email.

I decided to try again, as follows:

“Thank you for your letter… regarding my complaint.

“I notice that you do not mention anywhere in your reply whether the commissioner is going to investigate this matter or not. However you do, helpfully, state that the commissioner is able to inquire into complaints of a breach “if they are supported by sufficient evidence to justify an inquiry”.

“You will know that a previous inquiry was made into the status of Mr Osborne’s former property in Cheshire after concern was raised about his claim for expenses regarding Parliamentary duties he allegedly carried out at a house there.

“This is a separate complaint.

“As you will know from my previous letter, Mr Osborne claimed expenses, not only for the house but for two other land titles which were also part of his mortgage. These pieces of land could not have anything to do with his Parliamentary business and yet his claim included them. Therefore, his claim was fraudulent – he was stating that it was for one thing – Parliamentary duties – when in fact it was for another – to pay off, at the taxpayers’ expense, a mortgage he had taken out for a considerable amount of money. We have subsequently discovered that Mr Osborne has sold all three properties for an amount that could be more than double the price he originally paid for them – up to £1 million – and kept the entire amount. I have provided ample evidence to support the above statements.

“This is a scandalous matter. A member of the Cabinet – the Chancellor of the Exchequer, no less! – diverting taxpayers’ money under false pretences in order to gain a pecuniary advantage of up to £1 million. And at a time when millions of people are having to make the choice between staying warm and eating!

“It may interest you to know that many right-thinking citizens of the UK are also scandalised by this matter and wish to see it resolved and justice done. Articles I have written have attracted the support of around 5,000 readers and they all want to know what will be done about this. I appreciate that, in the context of a nation of 60 million people, 5,000 is not a great number. However you should bear in mind that I occupy only a very small corner of the UK’s media. If my platform had been more high-profile, you can be assured that many more people would be calling for justice in this matter.

“You also refer to the fact that I have reported this matter to the police. This is true. But I must inform you that I received a strange telephone call from the Metropolitan Police, stating that they could not investigate the matter directly as an investigation was already in progress, being handled by others. They declined to explain what they meant. Can you tell me what they meant? I wrote to my MP, seeking clarification, but he has not yet responded.

“Taken as a whole, and writing as a right-thinking person myself, I have to wonder whether attempts are being made to obscure this matter – cover it up, hide it away. Your letter is a case in point. Why do you not tell me outright what the commissioner has decided?

“It all seems very suspicious to me.”

Does anyone feel like supporting this complaint? Just email standardscommissioner@parliament.uk and say you are aware a complaint has been made about George Osborne’s expenses claims for the property in Cheshire he recently sold, and that you wish to know when the inquiry will be set up and how matters are progressing. If enough people shout about it, maybe they’ll shift.  

Osborne update: Information sent to Standards Commissioner

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account, code, commissioner, conduct, duty, evidence, expense, farm, fraud, George Osborne, harrop fold, house, inquiry, Interest, land registry, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, mortgage, paddock, Parliamentary, profit, report, responsibility, rules, standards, taxpayer, Vox Political

He thinks he can get away with using taxpayers’ money in a get-rich-quick property scheme, and then pocketing the profits. It seems clear that he committed fraud. He should be jailed.

Dear ——- —-,

Thank you for your email of December 20, and for replying to my complaint about Rt Hon George Osborne MP so promptly.

Herewith please find copies of Land Registry documents relating to the properties in question. These may be obtained from the Land Registry on request. It is clear from them that both properties were owned by Mr Osborne and were sold together – as a single transaction – to the new owners. Under those circumstances it is unreasonable to expect that the valuation of £445,000, which appears on both documents for the period when Mr Osborne owned those properties, relates to those properties individually; it is the value of both properties, taken together. That is how Mr Osborne bought them, and it is how he sold them. It is unreasonable to expect anyone to believe there are separate valuations for the land and the building.

It must follow, therefore, that Mr Osborne’s claim for mortgage expenses towards use of the building in the pursuance of his Parliamentary duties also went towards payment of mortgage expenses on the paddock, and I understand it is now a belief that is widely held by the public, that Mr Osborne did not spend a single penny of his own money on the mortgage for the properties in question.

There are questions that I cannot answer for you. I do not hold details of the single mortgage he held, that covered both the land west of Macclesfield Road (the paddock) and at Harrop Fold Farm – that would be a private document and its details would be a matter for him to divulge. Therefore I cannot say for certain whether he claimed for all of the mortgage interest or just a percentage covering the house. As a reasonable man, however, I can say that it seems unlikely he would put forward an arbitrary figure – and how would he know the correct valuation for the building alone, when he bought it and the paddock as a single package?

You rightly state that the Commissioner has already inquired into Mr Osborne’s claims for his second home over the relevant period. The only conclusion I can draw from this, in the light of the above information, is that Mr Osborne may have misled the Commissioner about the true nature of his mortgage interest payments. I would imagine this is a serious offence against the Commissioner’s office; if it is not, I am sure that the general public would be as shocked as I would.

Bear in mind also that the sum of money concerned in this affair is around £1 million. This is not a paltry amount and, if the taxpayers of the UK have been unwittingly subsidising a profit-making scheme for this man, it would be unreasonable to deny them knowledge of the matter and recompense for the misuse of their tax pounds.

Thank you for your attention in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response. I understand that your office would not, in any case, proceed with an investigation without a written complaint, so I will put the necessary documents in the post at my earliest convenience.

Osborne paddock update: Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards

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2006, account, Act, Channel 4, code, commissioner, conduct, Dispatches, duty, evidence, expense, farm, fraud, George Osborne, Guardian, harrop fold, house, Independent, inquiry, Interest, land registry, libel, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Mirror, mortgage, newspaper, paddock, Parliamentary, police, profit, report, responsibility, rules, standards, taxpayer, Telegraph, Vox Political

Shady: Why will the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards NOT investigate the new evidence that has come to light about George Osborne’s expenses?

It seems the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is reluctant to examine the case of George Osborne, who paid mortgage interest on his paddock with taxpayers’ money before selling it off with a neighbouring farmhouse for around £1 million and pocketing the cash.

Mr Osborne, as is now well-documented, claimed mortgage interest on both properties as an allowable expense, stating that he needed the house to perform his duties as an MP. The paddock was registered separately with the Land Registry and was not mentioned in his expenses claim, but thanks to newspaper reports earlier this month, the nation understands that the money he received was used to pay for it.

Apparently this is not good enough for the Standards Commissioner. After I requested an inquiry, I received an email from Heather Wood, registrar of members’ financial interests. She wrote: “The Commissioner is able to inquire into complaints of a breach of both the Code and the rules of the House only if they are supported by sufficient evidence to justify an inquiry.

“Since the Commissioner has already inquired into Mr Osborne’s claims for his second home over the relevant period, there would need to be evidence of a breach of the Code of Conduct and the Rules of the House, other than that he had already investigated, before he could consider this matter further. That evidence would need to be sufficient to justify an inquiry.”

She went on to provide a link to the result of the previous inquiry. I read it very thoroughly but could find no mention whatsoever of the paddock at Harrop Fold Farm.

From the evidence provided by the commissioner’s office, I can only conclude that Mr Osborne did not tell the authorities that the money he claimed – in order, let’s remember, to discharge his Parliamentary responsibilities – would also partly pay for an empty field that he planned to sell for an exorbitant profit, years later.

To me, this is clearly accounting fraud, which is a criminal offence under the Fraud Act 2006.

The only reason I can find for the reluctance shown by the Commissioner is that my evidence comes from newspaper reports, and the guidance on submitting complaints does make it clear that such evidence may not be enough.

However, it seems clear that there is substance behind the allegations. Firstly, the evidence was transmitted in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary on TV; then the Telegraph, Guardian, Mirror and the Independent all came out with corroborating reports. They would not do this without being able to back up what they were saying; if the details were false, then they would all have been guilty of libel, which is itself an offence – and I am sure Mr Osborne would be quick to pursue them through the courts in such circumstances.

He has not done so. What does this suggest to you?

My next step will be to write to the reporters concerned. I’ll need to ask them if the evidence to support their stories is publicly available and, if so, where I can find it. Then I’ll have another crack at the Commissioner. If any of the reporters concerned are reading this, please get in touch and provide any illumination you can – I think we would all be genuinely delighted to see your contribution.

Oh – there is one last line from the registrar, as follows: “Your e-mail also suggests that criminal conduct may have occurred. Any such allegations would be a matter for the police, not for the Commissioner, and I note that you have already raised this matter with them.”

That’s right – they said they couldn’t investigate because an inquiry was already taking place, and I’m still awaiting a response from my MP on that subject. Isn’t it interesting that the responses I’m getting are starting to go around in circles?

I’ll keep you all informed of progress.

‘Gate-gate’ whitewash bid should achieve nothing

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abuse, Andrew Mitchell, chief whip, Coalition, Conservative, Downing Street, expense, George Osborne, government, insult, Maria Miller, Met, Metropolitan, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, paddock, Parliament, people, pleb, police, politics, public order, The Sun, Tories, Tory, Vox Political

Andrew Mitchell: Either you believe him when he says the police log of ‘Gate-gate’ was false, or you believe him when he admitted abusing a policeman and apologised “profusely” for it. I prefer not to believe a word he says.

What on earth does Andrew Mitchell hope to achieve by reviving ‘Gate-gate’, three months after the event?

It seems a police officer who was not on duty, but allegedly witnessed the incident last September when Mitchell verbally abused a colleague at the gate to Downing Street, has been arrested under suspicion of falsifying his report.

And Mitchell himself has appeared on television, telling ITV News the contents of the police log of the event – which would have been written by the man he attacked – were falsified.

It would be very easy to take these two things together, and believe that the police faked the incident. That would be completely wrong. They are separate things.

First, we have the investigation into the officer who was off-duty. There is a suggestion that this person may not have witnessed the incident at all, but still supplied an account of it to his MP.

From there, it seems we are supposed to believe that The Sun was able to get the same person to provide it with a copy of a confidential Metropolitan Police report on the incident. The constable was arrested as part of a wider inquiry into how confidential Met information got into national newspapers.

That doesn’t have anything to do with the first-hand report, written by the policeman who actually received a tongue-lashing from Mitchell.

This states that, when asked to get off his bicycle and refrain from using the vehicle entrance to Downing Street (there’s a pedestrian entrance as well), Mitchell subjected the officer to a string of abuse, told him to “learn your place” and said “You don’t run this government”. The piece de resistance was the allegation that Mitchell described the policeman as a “pleb”.

Mitchell has always disputed the exact words, especially the “pleb” appellation. But he has admitted an incident took place, and admitted saying “I thought you guys were supposed to f*cking help us”. That’s enough for him to be arrested on a charge of abusing a police officer, which is a public order offence. Mitchell is on record as having apologised “profusely” to the officer. That comes from a Downing Street statement.

So why is he saying the police log of the incident is false?

Apparently, on ITV News on Monday, he said: “I’d just like to reiterate once again that it’s the contents of the alleged police log which are false … they are false and I want to make that very clear.”

He’s not just referring to the “pleb” reference here – he’s talking about the log of the entire incident. That’s an incident which he has admitted took place. For which he apologised. “Profusely”.

I do not believe him.

Not only is the first-hand evidence against him, I think we should remember that weight is given to the honesty of the police. It has to be – they deal with contentious situations on a regular basis and it is therefore necessary for us to rely on their integrity in accounts that follow, such as court cases. Even after the revelations about cover-ups such as Hillsborough or (going back a bit) the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six, I don’t think we should be discouraged from believing the average bobby on the beat is actually trying to uphold the law, not undermine it. If you want corruption, look further up the ranks.

It is also very important to see this in the context of other Conservative MPs and their alleged misdeeds. The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is investigating Maria Miller over her expenses claims (as is well-documented, including in this blog). And George Osborne used taxpayers’ money to make up to £1 million on property including a farmhouse and paddock in Cheshire; he claimed the cash as Parliamentary expenses so we are meant to believe the paddock was a necessary expense incurred by his duties as an MP. What utter nonsense!

Let’s not forget Liam Fox, who became a former Defence Secretary after misbehaviour was alleged against him.

So Conservatives have been giving themselves a bad reputation. It seems to me that they want to tidy up their image. What better place to start than by undermining and rubbishing their worst PR disaster of 2012?

I do not believe them.

My advice is that you should not believe them either.

Britain’s worst idlers – the MPs who wrote Britannia Unchained

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bailing, banker, benefit, benefits, borrow, Britannia, Britannia Unchained, British, Cameron, Chris, comic, commerce, commercial, constituencies, constituency, Dandy, David, debt, director, directorship, disabled, dividend, Dominic Raab, economy, effort, elite, Elizabeth, employment, Enterprise, executive, expense, failure, financier, Free, Free Enterprise Group, GDP, government, graft, grant, Group, humour, hypocrite, idlers, industry, Kwarteng, Kwasi, laziness, leave, lie-in, manager, mismanage, MP, Patel, pay, pension, political, price, Priti, promotion, propoganda, reckless, remuneration, resettlement, reshuffle, right-wing, risk, salaries, salary, senior, share, shareholder, sick, Skidmore, slacker, something-for-nothing, subsidise, subsidy, tax, Tory, Tory-led, Truss, Unchained, unemployment, vacation, workers

I have been saddened to learn of two events that will take place in the near future: The death of The Dandy, and the publication of Britannia Unchained.

The first needs little introduction to British readers; it’s the UK’s longest-running children’s humour comic, which will cease publication (in print form) towards the end of this year, on its 75th anniversary. The second appears to be an odious political tract scribbled by a cabal of ambitious right-wing Tory MPs, desperate to make a name for themselves by tarring British workers as “among the worst idlers in the world”.

The connection? Even at the end of its life, there is better and more useful information in The Dandy than there will be in Britannia Unchained.

The book’s authors, Priti Patel, Elizabeth Truss, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore, and Kwasi Kwarteng, all members of the Free Enterprise Group of Tory MPs, argue that British workers are “among the worst idlers in the world”, that the UK “rewards laziness” and “too many people in Britain prefer a lie-in to hard work”.

They say the UK needs to reward a culture of “graft, risk and effort” and “stop bailing out the reckless, avoiding all risk and rewarding laziness”.

Strong words – undermined completely by the authors’ own record of attendance at their place of work.

Chris Skidmore’s Parliamentary attendance record is just 88.1 per cent – and he’s the most diligent of the five. Kwasi Kwarteng weighs in at 87.6 per cent; Elizabeth Truss at 85.3 per cent; and Priti Patel at 81.8 per cent. Dominic Raab is the laziest of the lot, with Parliamentary attendance of just 79.1 per cent.

To put that in perspective, if I took more than a week’s sick leave per year from my last workplace, I would have been hauled up before the boss and serious questions asked about my future at the company. That’s a 97.9 per cent minimum requirement. Who are these slackers to tell me, or anyone else who does real work, that we are lazy?

Some have already suggested that these evil-minded hypocrites are just taking cheap shots at others, to make themselves look good for promotion in an autumn reshuffle. Maybe this is true, although David Cameron would be very unwise to do anything but distance himself from them and their dangerous ideas.

I think this is an attempt to deflect attention away from the way the Tory-led government has mismanaged the economy, and from its murderous treatment of the sick and disabled. As one commentator put it: “They get a token Asian, a token African, a token Jew, mix in the middle class/grammar school rubbish propaganda, and suddenly they are just ordinary people? No they are not; they are stooges for the ruling elite.”

Britain doesn’t reward laziness among its working class. What it rewards is failure by managers, directors of industry, financiers. These people continually increase their salaries and other remuneration while their share prices fall, their dividend payments are lacklustre and shareholder value is destroyed. What have they given shareholders over the past 10 years? How many industrial or commercial leaders have walked off with millions, leaving behind companies that were struggling, if not collapsing? Does the criticism in Britannia Unchained apply to senior executives and bankers?

Our MPs are as much to blame as big business. They vote themselves generous pay, pensions and extended vacations (five months per year). They never start work before 11am, never work weekends (or most Fridays, when they are supposed to be in their constituencies, if I recall correctly). They enjoy fringe benefits including subsidised bars, restaurants and gyms. They take part-time directorships in large companies which take up time they should be using to serve the public. Only a few years ago we discovered that large numbers of them were cheating on their expense claims. They take more than £32,000 in “Resettlement Grant” if we kick them out after one term – which, in my opinion, means all five authors of Britannia Unchained should be applying for it in 2015.

These are the people who most strongly represent the ‘something-for-nothing’ sense of entitlement the book decries.

Have any of them ever worked in a factory or carried out manual labour? I’ll answer that for you: With the exception of Elizabeth Truss, who did a few years as a management accountant at Shell/Cable and Wireless, none of them have ever done anything that could be called real work.

In fact, the people they accuse work very long hours – especially the self-employed. When I ran my own news website, I was busy for 12-14 hours a day (much to the distress of my girlfriend). Employees also work long hours, get less annual leave, earn less and pay more – in prices for consumer goods, taxes and hidden taxes – than most of Europe. Average monthly pay rates have now dropped so low that they are failing to cover workers’ costs, leading to borrowing and debt.

Are British workers really among the laziest in the world? Accurate information is hard to find but it seems likely we’re around 24th on the world league table. On a planet with more than 200 sovereign nations (204 attended the London Olympics), that’s not too shabby at all.

Interestingly, the European workers clocking on for the fewest hours are German. Those lazy Teutons! How dare they work so little and still have the powerhouse economy of the continent?

If so many are reluctant to get up in the morning, why are the morning commuter trains standing room only? Or have the Britannia Unchained crowd never used this form of travel?

It seems to me that Britannia Unchained is just another attempt by the Tory right to make us work harder for less pay. The Coalition is currently cutting the public sector and benefits to the bone, while failing to introduce policies that create useful employment, and trying to boost private sector jobs. The private sector has cut wages and pensions. The result is higher unemployment and benefits that cannot sustain living costs, creating a working-age population desperate for any kind of employment at all (even at the too-low wages already discussed).

And let’s remember that Conservatives want to remove employment laws to make it easier to dismiss employees. In other words, they want a workforce that will toil for a pittance, under threat of swift dismissal and the loss of what little they have.

Why do they think this will improve the UK’s performance?

We already work longer hours and have less protective legislation than in Europe (such as the European Time Directive). But we are less productive in terms of GDP than their French and German counterparts, who work fewer hours and are protected by the likes of the ETD.

France is more unionised than we are, yet its production per employee is higher.

The problem is poor management and bad leadership. Poor productivity is almost always due to poor investment and poor training. Workers are abused when they should be treated as an investment. They lose motivation and when managers get their decisions wrong, they blame the workers.

Working class people are sick of grafting for low pay and in poor working conditions, to be exploited by the types of people represented by the authors of Britannia Unchained.

Is it any wonder we feel de-motivated?

I started this article by linking The Dandy to Britannia Unchained, noting that one was coming to the end of its life in print while the other was about to be published for the first time. I’ll end by pointing out a quality they have in common.

The Dandy is closing because it represents ideas that are now tired and out-of-date. Britannia Unchained should never see publication – for the same reason.