CAMBRIA POLITICO

I was watching My Family on the (non-surround sound) telly the other day and the story was about the break up of a family and divorce. It showed (sadly but very amusingly) that divorcing couples will dash around the house putting coloured stickers on items that they claimed were ‘theirs’ . Naturally, as one does, I then thought about the AM’s and which part of their houses and furnishings belonged to them or to us the Welsh taxpayer. Please see the graphic below and tell me what I’ve missed out from the contents of a typical house, that has been paid for by us.

This issue will surely lead to acrimonious divorce proceedings between some politicians and their electorate. Let us hope that bailiffs will not be involved.

Calling all MPs in Westminster (and AMs) – please please click below to spend your John Lewis allowance! Special Deals on TVs are …HERE

Nice but dim Normally, I find so nice BBC Betsan’s blog rather boring and she rarely stimulates any kind of comment. However, her latest offering betrays the teeniest whiff of annoyance and irritation about AMs expenses – although hedged and couched in the constrained terms of the BBC. Maybe she’s admired Lynne’s nice new curtains, sat on Lesley’s throne sofa or watched Derek Brockway flouncing about on Nick’s surround sound hi-def TV? Maybe she has ridden, at tax payers expense, in the same taxi as Mike German in the short ride from his palatial first home to his second palatial home to the Palace in the Bay.

Is this envy? Or is she really concerned about the use to which taxpayer’s money is being put and willing to dig deeper than the usual frothy politics layers that she normally gets to. Come on Betsan … the Welsh bloggers are doing the work you are being paid, by the Welsh tax payer, to do.

Welsh Assembly members’ expenses claims included a £2,000 sofa, a £1,000 surround-sound TV, right down to a £2 glass bowl, it has been revealed by the BBC under the Freedom of information Act.

So what does this reveal about our trusted and underpaid AMs? That Lesley Griffiths (sofa so good) has a big bum? That Nick Ramsey (surround sound) is such a cool dude? That nice Lynne Neagle is a bookworm who hides behind fine and fancy curtains and offers her guests peanuts from a glass bowl?

Methinks we need more important detail than this please BBC. How many properties (second homes in Cardiff) have been paid for by the taxpayer in mortgage support for instance and have they been assessed for and paid the relevant taxes and been audited in the same way as the rest of us poor mortals are? I think we need to know so that an informed judgement can be made the next time they are up for election.

Personally, I think many of our AMs are grossly underpaid and under-rewarded for what they do; but… in the present skeptical climate and given some rotten apple examples in the Pork Palace of Westminster, other people don’t think the way I do. I am such a trusting soul. In Wales, we are very fortunate indeed not to have such poor representatives of the people as exist across the Severn.

Still, it doesn’t do any harm to have a look inside the pork barrel from time to time. Just in case. Does it?

Update: the pdf with all the details is here

Update: Wah hey! This story has attained PorkBuster status from Guido Fawkes

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Let go! I paid for it and it’s mine!

Slightly less boring Betsan

It’s curtains for Lynne Neagle says BBC

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