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.

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.