I don’t usually devote any space on this blog to anyone other than John Mann MP (let’s face it, he keeps handing me enough material for a dozen blogs) but today I’ll make an exception.

Three MPs charged with expenses fiddling are aiming to use legal aid to defend themseleves. That’s right, having fraudulently trousered a load of the taxpayers cash already, they are asking you and I to pay for their defense. £3million quid!

See the Telegraph

Having got that off my chest, I’ll just remind readers that fiddling is fiddling. The amount doesn’t matter. It’s just a matter of the degree of fiddling.

If anyone wants the little matter of J0hn Mann’s expenses claim and repayment, which he treats as if it was toxic waste and to be avoided at all costs, clarified for the taxpayers who fund the Government, please sign the petition.

UPDATE

Friend of Mannisms, Sir Olly Cromwell, has done a neat bit of research on the swindling MPs trying to weasel out of their come-uppance. He’s identified the legal represenatatives of the accused and their email addresses. He has sent an email to each essentially saying that, since the taxpapyers are picking up the bill for Legal Aid, he has instructed the barristers to enter a Guilty Plea. Some wonderful thinking there, Olly.

Please get yourselves over to http://youve-been-cromwelled.org/?p=584 and copy and paste the email and send it under your own name to the legal eagles, who are  getting rich on the back of these thieving MPS.

The sucker in this case is YOU, the taxpayer.

On March 19th, I drew readers attention to a nasty bit of bullying from John Mann MP threatening a Retford Resident (RR) with a libel suit and police for asking a reasonable question about Mr. Mann’s expenses. RR asked not to be identified in this blog, but was aware that John Mann would know who he was from the email exchange published.

A few days ago, RR and his wife received some Mann propaganda. The envelope it arrived in is shown below.

You can see the hand written annotation to the return address. It appears innocuous enough unless you know the background.

This is clearly intended to intimidate RR.

Putting the frighteners on a pensioner and his wife is a despicable act and adds a new dimension to Mann’s aready questionable behaviour.

My advice to RR is to take this to the police.

The Serious Fraud Office and South Yorkshire Police have dropped their investigation into allegations of fraudulently handled miner’s compensation claims due to insufficient evidence.

See BBC news report

So who are the losers?

On one hand, the individuals against whom the allegations had been made. One said that the last five years had been a hideous and heartbreaking time.

But the real losers were the miners and their families who had their expectations cruelly raised by John Mann’s campaign of public meetings and media appearances promising a payout.

Some of these people may have spent savings or even borrowed money against the prospect of a future payment and now will not only be disappointed but also in a financially poorer position than they might have been without all the hoo-haa.

Any decent advocate would have gone about this quietly as there was never any guarantee of further compensation unless and until a fraud had been proved in a court of law. But not Mr Mann. Never shying away from an opportunity to publicise himself, he shouted this from the rooftops.

And has John Mann made any apology?

Not on your life.

And in this week’s Worksop Guardian, through his mouthpiece, he says he is set to call for a public enquiry after the election.

What a piece of work he is.

John Mann’s weekly rant against Bassetlaw District Council in the Worksop Guarding Mann focused on his peculiar version of Icelandic Bank investments.

Aided and abetted by his mate, Editor George Robinson, currently working his notice for allegedly failing to meet circulation and advertising targets, Mann trotted out  his usual nonsense blaming the council for an £8million investment (which is being returned, no matter what Mann will have you believe) but conveniently forgetting to tell readers that Icelandic Banks were on a list of approved investments recommended to the Council by, wait for it, the Labour Government. No mention either that Nottingham City Council (Labour) dumped over £40million into the Icelandic Banks with the encouragement of the same government.

This week’s  outpouring of self-serving cobblers has surely demonstrated to everyone in Bassetlaw that John Mann is indeed an Icelandic Banker. Evidence of his financial acumen can also be seen from his expenses claims, where he apparently can’t be bothered to reclaim £2,395.02 ‘claimed on the wrong forms’ and repaid by him when MP’s expenses came under scrutiny. Much more on that to come.

Finally, John Mann would do well to remember that those hard working Council officers who have had the boot aimed at them for the past 6 years are also voters. And their families and friends.

STOP PRESS: Just visited the Worksop Guardian’s website and clicked on the Breaking News link. I got a story about the Vesuvius appeal. Dated 11th March.  That’s 2 weeks ago as of today. Little wonder that rag is failing.

John Mann has been sending out letters on various subjects to caefully chosen sections of the Bassetlaw electorate. Different in subject matter, the letters share a common style. A mixture of omissions, half-truths, downright lies and deception. They are designed to appeal at a visceral level and promote anger and outrage. To get votes for John Mann.

Who paid for the distribution of this deception?

Not John Mann, who, on his Facebook page, states “we don’t have the opposition’s money” and begs for campaign donations.

Directly or indirectly, the dissemination of this literature was paid for by the unions. Indirectly as they are the Labour Party’s major contributor and directly as they sponsor John Mann.

So there you have it; the unions sponsoring a member of the current government to mislead the voters.

I thought these kind of shennigans disappeared with Old Labour.

Apparently not.

Below are two photographs – one of Vesuvius and one of John Mann MP.

1. Which one has the biggest mouth?

2. Which one belches most hot air?

Answers on a postcard to:

John Mann

68a Carlton Road,

Worksop

The old saying that today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapper (pre Health and Safety) doesn’t apply to the web.

True, causes will be taken up and run their course and be replaced by other more recent causes. But while printed matter ends up in the blue bin and gets recycled into toilet paper (which, to be honest, it was in  the first place), web content never goes away. It hangs around to haunt anyone who is imprudent enough to get the attention of the media, large or small.

Try Googling for “John Mann libel” or “John Mann ASDA” and you’ll see that this site and the other blog sites which support me are all there for everyone to see, right up at the top of the search engine rankings.

So anyone looking for the Gospel according to Mann on Google, Yahoo or Bing will have quite a few versions to choose from.

And unlike the recycled newspaper stories, they will be there till the end of eternity.

NOTE: To the Diddy Manns who leave comments here. Unless you are commenting on the article, your comments will not be published.

I have received another letter from John Mann MP, this time on Labour Party headed paper.

It starts off with

In your childish and highly offensive website you make a large number of inaccurate statements…..

It carries on in a similar vein for a paragraph. It makes no effort to correct the inaccuracies, though,

Fair enough, he’s entitled to his say.

Then he goes on to say

You make inferences that there is something improper regarding my Parliamentary expenses. You are inaccurate and wrong in this. There is and has been nothinng improper.

The rest of the letter goes on to detail his Press credits and other testimonials for being sqeaky clean.

Now, here’s my problem with this. The letter makes no effort to answer the question asked on this blog and by a Retford resident by email.

A question that is met with threats of legal action whenever asked. Namely, regarding the repayment of expenses made by Mr. Mann, what was the claim for and if it is legitimate and claimed on the wrong forms as he says, then why hasn’t he reclaimed it. It is not an insignificant sum.

So, here’s a challenge  for Mr. Mann. He likes challenges and has this week offered one of his own in the Worksop Guarding Mann. (Goodbye, George. Can’t say I’ll miss you. Maybe next time we’ll get an editor with the balls to print news instead of fiction.)

Reclaim the money on the correct forms and give it to charity. That seems a neat solution since you don’t seem to care about reclaiming it for yourself. There are a number of charitable institiutions in Bassetlaw who would benefit greatly from £2,395.02

Do this and I’ll get off your case. At least with regard to expenses.

I look forward to your response.

UPDATE: Original post edited after an inaccuracy was pointed out. See, I can be reasonable.

According to the Mail on Sunday who set up a TV sting, 4 Labour MPs were caught dipping their hands in the cookie jar.

This is a great opportunity for you to get on the telly and rubbish your fellow MPs for being naughty.

Unless, like all the times before, you only point your finger at Tory MPs and remain steadfastly silent when the Labour contingent get caught.

But, given your last couple of leaflets in Retford, you shouldn’t have a problem as you don’t appear to be a Labour supporter any more.

I’ve just got some information on the booklet (there goes another rainforest) which the Diddy Manns have been dropping through the letterboxes of the unsuspecting people of Retford.

As we have come to expect, the document contains more false claims than an MP’s expenses.

But the one really noticable thing was a TOTAL ABSENCE of any reference to the Labour Party. You’d never know that this shameless begging letter booklet came from a Labour candidate for the general election.

What’s up, John? Are you ashamed to be associated with Broon & Co?

I’ve emailed No10 and asked if they knew you were looking for a divorce.

I’ll let you know if they bother with a reply.

A few scant weeks after signing an Early Day Motion calling for the reform of libel laws ‘which stifle free expression’ , John Mann threatened a Retford resident in his sixties with  libel action for asking questions about his expense claims.

After seeing Mann’s threat of libel action against me, a Retford resident got in touch and sent me copies of an email exchange between himself and John Mann in February this year. He has asked not to be identified or quoted directly as he is concerned about police involvement. More on that later. But he is aware that Mr Mann will know his identify.

The exchange started civily enough, with the Retford Resident (I’ll call him RR) asking John Mann if he had repaid any expenses and did he employ any relatives.

Mann replied via his parliament.uk email address asking for RR’s home address to which he would send a copy of the Legg report.

RR replied with details of a specific repayment which he had been made aware of, coincidentally the one which I had highlighted and ultimately led to Mann’s letter to me, and asked Mann to clarify it. He also asked again for details regarding employment of family members.

Mann’s reply consisted of two short lines:

This is inaccurate and libellous.

Any such libel will be actioned

RR replied, pointing out that Mann had again avoided answering the questions and saying that the voters should have a chance to make up their own minds about the subject.

Mann’s reply was even shorter than the last.

As you are using a fake name this will then go directly to the police.

RR was not using a fake name and pointed this out to Mr Mann, also stating that he was greatly concerned by Mann’s threatened involvment of the police. So much so that he had passed the correspondence to his solicitor.

This email exchange continued further, with Mann NEVER SATISFACTORILY answering the questions and alluding to a plot by the Conservatives and/or ‘the people who stole the miners compensation money’. He again referred to RR’s emails containing libellous material and repeated the threat of legal action.

This is blatant bullying of a constituent by Mr Mann, using his position as an MP to try and stop any questioning of his expenses by the voters.

He was elected to represent his constituents, not bully them into silence.

This is part of a pattern of bullying behaviour by John Mann.

He is unfit to represent the people of Bassetlaw in any capacity and in light of these revelations, should resign his position immediately and allow the local Labour Party to field a candidate who would have the constituents’ interests at heart, not their own.

Mr Mann is the most humourless MP I have ever come across. Iain Dale

No shit.

Dizzy wonders if John Mann is a wanker. Having met him, I’d venture to say yes. Iain Dale

No comment.

I’m already being sued sufficiently.