The fine looking fellow above is Danny Alexander (aren't people looking young these days?) who is the replacement as Chief Secretary to the Treasury for David Laws, following the latter's little embarrassment. In passing and while on the subject, Backy the bactrian camel (to whom I have outsourced keeping an eye on things at Westminster) tells me that in addition to the 'rent' claimed by Laws to be passed over to his lover in residence, he also claimed 'utilities' and 'service charges' in the sum of £350 per month until some jobsworth had the impertinence to ask for receipts. No doubt entirely coincidentally, at precisely the point receipts were asked for the claims dropped to £62 per month.
Oink!
No doubt you are thinking that nice young Mr Alexander (another Lib Dem by the way) must be squeaky clean. 'Dave' and his pals will not be wanting any more embarrassment! Oh no!
Ermmm...
It turns out that nice young Mr Alexander bought a flat in London in 1999. He told the House of Commoins authorities it was his second home and thus claimed subsidies for it from public funds (more than £37,000 including for works of improvement on it just before he put it on the market). In 2007 he sold it. He told HM Revenue and Customs it was his main home and thus did not have to pay capital gains tax on it. This is all in accordance with the rules. To quote that nice Mr Clegg...
'There are MPs who flipped one property to the next, buying property, paid by you, the taxpayer, and then they would do the properties up, paid for by you, and pocket the difference in personal profit.'.
Really, Mr Clegg? Whatever next? Backy can only declare his/her amazement. I'm not very good at camel sexing and I'm certainly not going round Backy's rear end for a look. Anyone any ideas as to Backy's gender?
As regards the Gaza convoy thing, I'm suffering from outrage fatigue. Words still fail me. But while on the subject of Israel, one historic matter which has recently come to light is that South Africa have declassified documents showing that Israel was willing to sell South Africa nuclear weapons (as well as conventional and chemical weapons) in 1975. An agreement concerning military links between the two countries included a secrecy clause and the Israeli authorities tried to persuade the post-apartheid South African government to keep the story suppressed but to no avail. They then denied the existence of the agreement but when confronted with the documentation below the office of Shimon Peres, now President of Israel, said words to the effect of 'errrmmm...'
The below picture shows four men discussing arms sales, or possibly comparing notes on how to keep the natives in line. Three are war criminals. The fourth is just prime minister of apartheid South Africa.
2 comments:
You can never go wrong with a Who title sir.
Daniel, I quite agree.
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