The Nad Files

Fresh from being re-elected on a screeching lunatic harridan ticket, Nadine Dorries is in trouble again.

NADINE DORRIES, the Conservative MP, faces the first expenses complaint of the new parliament after a row about a £10,000 claim she paid to a friend’s company.

Her former Commons researcher, Peter Hand, is writing to John Lyon, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, questioning whether the claim can be justified.

The complaint will undermine hopes that the expenses controversy can be consigned to the last parliament.

Dorries, who last week retained her mid-Bedfordshire seat, claimed the money for an annual report in 2007 on her performance as an MP, and consultancy services, but Hand said he never saw the report or worked on it. Dorries claimed a total of more than £40,000 in expenses for services provided by Marketing Management (Midlands), owned by her friend Lynn Elson. They live near each other in the Cotswolds.

The twatteriti smell blood. I hope they get it.

AJ

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Painful Nads

While I’ve not followed all of the travails of Nadine Dorries, I predicted a year ago that she would be a liability to the Tories.

It seems she came very badly unstuck at a local hustings in her constituency.

I’m not sure I’d have believed Tim Ireland’s tale were it not for the video evidence:

… and the other sources that appear to back him up. Here’s a chap who was at the meeting as a constituent.

Another bloggist & constituent was also there. Here’s a précis.

The local news picked up on it as well.

AJ

Perfect Labour Material…

In the confected pre-election class war we’re entering into, Sally Bercow (Illman), the wife of Speaker John Bercow is a glistening beacon of Labour propaganda.

This political serpent with mammaries, first came onto my radar when CF relayed news of the hot water of her nebulously crafted CV had got her into.

The wife of Commons Speaker John Bercow was sacked from a leading City firm after it claimed she had lied about having a degree from Oxford University.

Sally Bercow was dismissed by public relations business Consolidated Communications after it contacted the Oxford authorities and discovered they had not granted her a degree.

The company accused her of having lied on her CV. It also claimed that Mrs Bercow – who at the time was known by her maiden name, Sally Illman – had used ‘multiple CVs’ with different ‘facts’ about her past on each one.

Via various twatterings, I know she she’s given an interview to the Evening StanLaurel, which contains some quite revolting quotes.

While I am not going to cast judgement on her lush cavorting past (glass houses etc), I do think that since she seeks public office, what she thinks now and how her personality influence her politics are important.

Just one line in the part of the interview that deals with her past stands out for me as worth reposting:

A boyfriend warned her that she was behaving badly while drunk. "I said he was being sexist and misogynist. My response was to attack him rather than think about the truth."

Okay.. one more. Think ‘Zeal of the Convert’, and what that likely entails in her future proclamations on the eeeevils of booze.

She stopped drinking abruptly in October 2000, "because it wasn’t fun any more. I went to AA for a couple of meetings. It was very helpful at first. But I thought I could give it up myself: and I did. Never touched a drop since".

So why also the fuss over this flibbertigibbet?

Now she’s trying to become a Labour councillor in a Pimlico ward that is solid Tory and has her eyes on a Parliamentary seat at the next election.

Right, so…

He’s still very Eurosceptic, I’m pro-European.

"I’m really keen on Harriet Harman and her equality agenda – she’s done such a lot to advance the cause of women and I completely agree on her all-women shortlists: they transformed the Labour Party.

"I don’t even want to send the children to the grammars in John’s constituency. I’m strongly against selection, because it entrenches privilege."

And in spite of her having, on account of an inheritance, attended Marlborough College and Oxford:

"Deep down, I do think the Tory party is for the privileged few and what it stands for isn’t in the interests of most ordinary people."

In remarks that will grate with the Tory leadership, she says she doubts his commitment to the public services. "They’re not really interested in opportunity for all. He has his children at state school now but let’s see what happens at secondary level. There’s not a real commitment to the state sector among the Tories. The vast majority of the shadow cabinet send their children privately."

And plenty of the cabinet too, dear, like your esteemed Hattie…

In 1996, Harman sent her younger son, Joseph, to the non-Catholic St Olave’s Grammar School, Orpington, after she had sent her eldest son, Harry, to a Catholic grant-maintained school the London Oratory School, on the grounds that her family were Catholic. This appeared to go against the spirit of the pledge by David Blunkett not to increase selective education. Harman said of her choice: "This is a state school that other children in my son’s class will be going to. That he has got in has got absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I am an MP. Any child in Southwark can apply, many go and admission is open to every child in Southwark irrespective of money or who their parents are.".^[32]

There’s sure to be amusement ahead, as it becomes clear that:

In this class war, Labour are on the side of those with none.

On a more superficial note, Conservative media handlers will be on high alert to make sure she doesn’t get on the same platform as poor old Nadine Dorries:

Sally Shagger

  
Nadine rushed from the chamber shouting
“I’ve gotta fly – Bingo starts at 3.”

Know what I mean?

AJ

UPDATE: No sooner have I clicked Publish than a new update comes via @sscrltt on twatter.

Mad Nad is already there with her claws. Protesteth too much? Lol…

Nadine Dorries, a Tory MP who opposed Mr Bercow’s selection as Speaker, said: “We desperately need to restore both authority and respect to Parliament. What this interview has done is remove any painstaking progress Parliament has made and reduced the Speaker and his office to that of a laughing stock. How can we ask the people to trust us, when the man who holds us to account has such poor judgment that he allowed his wife to give such an appalling self obsessed interview?”

Self obsessed? Ha! Politician, vote for thyself.

Nadine Dorries put back in her box by Obo…

In an uncharacteristically non-sweary post, Obo has quite magnificently put Dagenham Dorries in her place.

Let’s face it, Nadine, no matter how you dress it up, MP’s brought this upon themselves. And you can’t even use the "few bad apples" rubbish, because it sounds like half or possibly more of currently sitting MP’s will lose their jobs because of this. It’s not a minority. I am quite certain that 600+ MP’s would have been sacked by my employer for making repeated claims that did not even abide by the very generous Green Book guidance, if my employer used the Green Book. But rest assured, Nadine, my employer’s expense policy is much, MUCH stricter than yours and our expenses checkers are not compliant and do not encourage us to use our expenses as a salary top-up, they are tough and will question the smallest amount of money. I have had to justify spending £2 on a cup of coffee for a customer.

…

What we want is for MP’s to be as honest as they expect us to be. You make the rules by which we all have to live, and then in a display of bare-faced effrontery, exempt yourselves from the most annoying of these. You are allowed to use accountants tax-free to fill in your tax returns; we are not. You are allowed to exempt yourselves from appearing in various state databases; we are not. You are allowed to smoke in your place of work; we are not. You use taxpayer money to subsidise the food and drink in your place of work; we get nothing.

Nice action. Read the rest…

AJ

Nadine Dorries

Less than two weeks ago, I said this of Iain Dale’s pilot radio show:

Try not to worry about the endorsement from Nadine Dorries, who I think will turn out to be a big liability for the Tories.

And today:

Nadine Dorries, the Tory backbencher, will be publicly reprimanded today by David Cameron after she claimed that MPs were victims of a “McCarthy-style witch-hunt” over their expenses.

The Conservative Party is deeply embarrassed by comments that the MP for Mid-Bedfordshire made early this morning when she warned that the relentless drip-drip of leaked claims was creating such an atmosphere of terror that there was a real risk of an MP committing suicide.

Hours after Ms Dorries made the remarks, Mr Cameron ordered a public statement that would distance the Tory party from the backbencher, insisting that her comments were her own and did not represent those of the Conservative Party.

According to one Tory source, party officials have had conversations with Ms Dorries on more than one occasion to rebuke her for her “increasing tendency to make wild and eccentric statements”.

Well well….

The Devil has a history of animosity towards Ms Dorries for her slightly mental views on abortion and her general disingenuousness.

AJ