Nadine Dorries MP has today been suspended from the Tories for agreeing to appear on “I’m a celebrity Get Me Out of Here.” Oh bully for you David Cameron. I am no defender of this appalling woman but that she is heading off to Australia to make a fool of herself (while still trousering £6,158 for representing the folks of Mid Bedfordshire as their MP) is hardly a hanging offence is it?
The point about Mad Nad is that she has done far worse before and got away with it. Moreover some of Call Me Dave’s pals in the party have done far worse in recent weeks and also got away with it. Calling a Policeman a “fucking pleb” should be a firing offence. But that was a posh boy with a posh boy comment. In the case of Mad Nad appearing on a brainless TV show this is a working class woman mixing it with a bunch of oiks on a show that only white trash watches. This is poor judgement by Cameron and his new chief whip and fellow Old Etonian Sir George Young.
For more on Sir George, brother of my step mother, and his great understanding of the working class see HERE
As to Nadine, she should have been slung out over her expenses record. What she claimed for was all quite legitimate according to the rules established by MPs for NPs so that they could all loot away legally from the taxpayer. I have covered here expenses record before on this blog noting:
“This is a woman who had both her daughters on the payroll, costing taxpayers c£30,000. One was paid a salary to act as her office manager while at the same time working on a full time degree. Lucky her. I hope her studies were not affected too badly by that extra work for mum.
Ms Dorries was cleared in the MPs second home scandal. Apparently it was 100% kosher to claim that a tiny hunting lodge 90 miles away from Westminster and 55 miles from Mid Bedfordshire was her main home so that she could claim big allowances (c£60,000) for her large “second home” in her constituency. The hunting lodge was owned by a close pal (Lynn Elson) whose marketing company trousered £51,000 of taxpayers cash for doing research work for Nadine in the space of just 15 months. This has all been declared above board.”
Had Call Me Dave had a few words before the last election with Mid Beds conservatives about this matter and Nadine been asked to step aside on that basis no-one would have complained. But then of course what Dorries did was pretty much what so many MPs of all parties did.
There is a suggestion that Dorries will now defect to UKIP. I do hope that if UKIP is offered the chance to take her, it declines. Having an “expenses maximiser” as its first MP would hardly set it apart from the old three parties of sleaze. It is not her desire to be part of a group of Z list celebrities that should have sunk Dorries but the expenses fiasco. As for Cameron’s Tories, I find myself despising them more as each day goes by.