Yesterday's Evening Standard accompanied this article with an inset headed "Revealed: Losers under new 60-minute travel rule".
I can't find the inset online, so I've scanned it in for you below. It continues:
Under new rules, MPs living within an hour's commute by train from London will be barred from having a second home... there are likely to be just 12 MPs affected. The Standard has estimated who the 'commuter dozen' will be..." and then lists Theresa May, Chris Grayling, Anne Milton, Michael Fallon, Ian Taylor, Peter Lilley, Michael Gove, Barbara Follett, Fiona McTaggart, Humfrey Malins, Kelvin Hopkins and Margaret Moran.
Now, I haven't paid much attention to the whole MPs' expenses 'scandal', but even I remember clearly that Kelvin Hopkins MP (Lab, Luton North) is one of the few who didn't claim for a second home, having claimed the princely sum of £1,242 for 'Cost of staying away from main home' in 2007-08. (Sure, he filled his boots on 'Office running costs' and 'Staffing costs', but that's not the topic here).
In other words, he is one of the few who won't lose out, so to say that he would is a malicious distortion. The funny thing is, t'was the self same Evening Standard which listed Kelvin Hopkins as a saint five months ago, with the summary "Travels with commuters on the Thameslink to London each morning, shunning a second home."
Friday, 30 October 2009
Potentially Libellous Shite Of The Week
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3 comments:
Margaret Moran, Hasn't she gone yet?
She's going but not until the election.
It's unfair on Hopkins but they've probably been quite clever in the way they've phrased it so as not to incur a libel action.
Still a few more months of snuffling for Moran, Sue. She's not going to go until she's squeezed every possible penny out of the gig.
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