Saint Tim's expenses.

The recent letter to the Harald from our local MP has raised a few questions about expenses, while I'm not making any claims either way as to their legality, there are some serious moral issues in play here.

This is what Loughton claimed in his letter,

so it's a "fact" that the house in Burgess Hill is his "family home" and so one would assume his main home, the one where he lives with his family. So, when he was claiming expenses on this home and signing this declaration, there needs to be some answers forthcoming.

This is the declaration signed repeatedly whilst claiming rather substantial expenses on this house as can be seen HERE , yes, since the big furore about MPs expenses Loughton has claimed to be whiter than white, but if we look back a few years we can see that he was lined up at the trough with the best of them.

 

What is questionable though (although again I am making no statement on legality) is that Timmy's expenses which are "away from (his) only or main home" are in the form of bills in the name of Mrs Elizabeth Loughton, including up to and over £800 a month for heating oil for his Wellhouse Lane pad, along with nearly 200 quid to service and repair his Aga.

There are also some interesting "food" receipts HERE which include about half a dozen toothbrushes and a load of Cheese Strings, among other supposedly necessary items enabling him to carry out important Parliamentary business.

 

Looks like December 2008 was a particularly expensive month for the taxpayer though, as Timmy and his family got a new bathroom fitted, along with a load of other electrical work including fitting of lights n the kitchen.

 

In case you were wondering about the "accompanying note", here it is...

Yes, apparently this new bathroom was as a result of the boiler "packing up", which makes me wonder why we're paying nearly 70quid a month on insurance to cover such eventualities and not claiming on it when we are absolutely forced to rip out our shower and fit a new one. Again I make no allegation of impropriety under law, merely raising simple questions, relating to documents that are freely available under the transparency laws that Timmy has always abstained from voting on.

 

Oh, and in case you were wondering, an essential part of any MPs work, is being able to watch the TV in the kitchen, I assume that this is so you don't miss Eastenders when you nip to the fridge to grab a Cheese String....

 

I know that this is all a few years old now, but as Timmy seems to want to repeatedly claim to be practically perfect in every way, I felt the need to draw attention to the vast amount of public cash he has snaffled over recent years.

 

If you, like me, think that Timmy is taking the piss, then think again, he even claimed £116 for someone to do that for him as well.....

 

 

 

 

This was just one year at random, there are plenty more available online, it is your right as a voter to hold your representatives to account for their actions, and what better time to show this than during an election.

 

You employ them to work for you, you have more power than they do, it may not appear that this is the case sometimes, but it is the truth. Say no to trough snaffling Tories in Adur, vote for anyone but them, but remember to vote, people died for your right to that.

 

I CBM

 

Loughton, liar or lawbreaker?

Interesting letter this week in the Harald, from our MP Timmy (The Lought) Loughton. He is again trying to justify his existence and the cash he is snaffling from the trough. He also tells some whopping fibs but that's a matter to be addressed another day.

Here's the interesting part of his epistle to the local rag.

Blurriness due to crap printing at the Harald.

Anyway, there are a few things that stand out in this paragraph, he uses the generic "Sussex" rather than specifying East or West, which are two different counties, so he may as well claim that we are all Hampshire after all.

It's interesting that he claims that the home in Burgess Hill is, and has been his "family home" since before he became an MP. If this is the case, then why, when he became an MP did this become his "Second Home" in order to claim mortgage payments of around £24k a year and about £400 a month in heating oil among other quite excessive expenses payments. Surely if he claims that this is definitely his family home and not his second residence, then he shouldn't have been claiming expenses on it for all the years that he did.

Now the main point of this post is really to address the fact that he claims that his home is "all of 12 minutes" from Shoreham, now let's look at that in detail.

Here's the shortest route between Lought's House and the Civic Centre in Shoreham.

Ok, so we have to accept that Loughton doesn't travel by helicopter, because he claims expenses for his car in order to travel to work in Shoreham, so that would be a journey of 14.635 miles.

So, using a simple time, speed and distance calculation that we all learned in O' Level maths, but needn't have because there's an app for that these days.

In order to make that journey in 12 minutes, as claimed in Timmy's letter, he would have to achieve an average speed of around 73mph, and as this journey goes through Ditchling this average would require some serious "making of time" on the A27. There is the possibility that Timmy prefers a different route to the one pictured (the shortest route), however this would increase the distance therefore increasing the average speed required to complete the journey in 12 minutes as claimed.

As the lowest average speed required to complete this journey is more than the legal speed limit on British roads, in order to average this speed one would have to hit more than 80mph at least once during this journey, and considering that the majority of the journey would be on single carriageway roads where 60mph would be the very maximum speed permitted, Timmy is telling us that every time he visits Shoreham he breaks the law.

There is always the possibility that his claim of "12 minutes" is just as fanciful as all of his other claims and should be taken with a pinch of salt.

You can decide, did he just admit to breaking the law, or did he just lie in a published letter? It has to be one or the other.

I CBM