Same old Tories ... they always look after their own

It is being reported that one of David Cameron's key advisors is heavily involved in a company that is set to gain from proposed cuts the Tories are pledging to make.

Never let it be said that the Tories don't take care of their own.

But hey, don't expect the NHS under the Tories to look after you.

Which party has been using cancer drugs as an election issue and has been caught telling fibs ? Step forward ...

Oh come on, we all know that the Tories will say just about anything to win the election. And after their attacks on Gordon Brown for misleading parliament last week you might expect the Tories would have attempted to take the moral high ground.

Sadly not.

It seems the Tories are prepared to even tell lies about cancer treatment and cancer drugs in order to win votes.

Surely trying to win votes by scaremangering ill people is a new all time low ?

Tories and Labour squabbling like children in the playground - "But he's doing it too !"

When I am dealing with a disagreement between children, when it is clear they are both in the wrong and both behaving in a way that is not acceptable, I let them know that the argument "I'm doing it because he is doing it" or "But he's doing it too", are simply not good enough reasons for doing something.

If it is wrong then it is wrong, whoever is doing it. So whilst I agree with Iain Dale that the Labour Party are showing stunning hypocrisy in criticising Lord Ashcroft's tax status, it is actually no defence for the Tory Party to say that they are doing it because Labour are doing it.

That was the argument many MPs made in making false expenses claims. It didn't wash then and it doesn't wash now.

There is, however, another subtly difference between labour and Tory tax dodgers making donations. The Labour people do not have a hand in the political strategy of the party. They make donations, but do not seek influence within Labour. Compare this to Lord Ashcroft who plays a major role in the Tories target seat strategy. This is a point the Tories choose to ignore when making comparisons.

Tory bloggers on Zac Goldsmith

The latest revelations that donations from Zac Goldsmith to the Tory Party may have been covered up are in the papers, So what are Tories bloggers saying about it ?

As of 10:16 am

Iain Dale says nothing.

Guido Fawkes, who claims to be independent but leans heavily in his postings towards attacking almost anyone except the Tories, says nothing.

Conservative Home says nothing.

Tory Radio says nothing

And of all the other Tory bloggers, I could not find one mention.

In stark contrast, after revelations about Gordon Brown, this issue was being discussed on Labour Websites and blogs like Labour List.

A week with the Tories - What does it tell us about them ?

It is fascinating how the Conservative party has tried to paint itself in David Cameron's image as something new and shiny that should be trusted at a time when politicians cannot be trusted to tell the truth. However, the last seven days tell us just how much of this image is wrong.

Let's start in Norfolk. In South West Norfolk the Tories were selecting a new candidate to stand in the safe Tory seat of South West Norfolk. Their selection effectively decides who will be the next MP in this seat. Now David Cameron likes to tell us how the Conservative Party has changed, how it is opening itself up, how it is letting the electorate make real decisions. He trumpets the so called "open primary" as a sign that the Tory Party is opening itself up. However, these open primaries are being used almost exclusively in seat where the sitting MP has stood down directly because of s scandal over expenses, meaning the "open primary" can help cleanse the Tory party's reputation in that area or alternatively they are being held in marginal seats where the use of the primary can win over a few more wavering voters.

In South West Norfolk there was no open primary. David Cameron's pledges about opening up democracy, how the Tory party was changing, and how local people could be allowed to make real decisions went out of the window. The sham of what David Cameron says, and how the Tories really act was shown for all to see.

Then we saw just how hypocritical the Tory Party really is in the wake of the selection of Elizabeth Truss as their candidate. Despite "openness" being their new watchword, the closed meeting of Tory members was not briefed on who had made the shortlist meaning that local Tories did not have a chance to find out the full details on who the candidates were. Then, upon being selected, it was revealed that their chosen candidate had had an 18 month affair with a married Tory MP, which she failed to mention at the meeting, the Tory Party showed itself to be as hypocritical as any party could be.

The leadership, ignoring their pledge towards openness, said that it was in the public domain and the candidate had their full support. The local party, feeling they had been lied to, referred her selection back to the Tory Party members in South West Norfolk and, as yet, we are not to know whether she will or will not be the Tory candidate.

In short this whole affair tells us that openness and honesty cuts only one way with the Tories. It is used to whitewash the Tories words. I don't much care if the Tory had an affair or not. It is her business. However, if you are claiming to be honest and open, you have to be exactly that and not expect people to have to look up your past on the internet.

Then switching from the East to the West, we have the example of the Tories in Cornwall and their "honesty" and "openness" when campaigning. Last week, Caroline Righton, the Conservative candidate in Newquay and St Austell misrepresented her Lib Dem opponent to electors. You can find chapter and verse on it all HERE.

Now everyone makes a mistake, and Caroline Righton appears to have made a big mistake in smearing her opponent. The deliberate insertion of a swear word in to a statement made by the Lib Dem candidate is childish. The forwarding of this false statement to electors is blatant low level dirty campaigning. But it could all be settled of Caroline Righton simply issued an apology, contacted those people who received her false information to make sure they understood it was an error and she apologised, and perhaps she could also have the guts to speak to the press and explain to them what she did without refusing to comment on what she has done.

The question is though, why a someone who uses the Tory mantra of fighting a positive and honest campaign can justify to herself telling untruths, peddling muck about her opponent and then refusing to apologise unless the simple truth is that the "positive and honest" campaign is just a means to an end. In fact the aim is not to be truthful, honest or positive, but instead to appear to be so in order to win at any cost.

Moving back from the West towards the Midlands, we read about two Tory councillors caught being unpleasant about fellow councillors in the Cotswolds. Two Tory councillors referred to Lib Dem councillors as "morons" on an internet forum. Did they apologise ? Did they offer an excuse ? No. Instead they claimed that one of their Facebook friends must be a Lib Dem sympathiser, and then ranted that it showed how "low the Lib Dems would go". So no apology, not reason given. Their abuse is forgotten in their foaming at the mouth to attack the Lib Dems again.

Finally we move back towards London for our geographical tour of the Tories behaviour. Watford Tories have returned to their usual form in spreading lies and innuendo about the actions of the Lib Dems in Watford. Before we start, let's remember that it was the former Watford Tory candidate who was found guilty of running a hate campaign against the Lib Dems in Watford just a few months ago, so you might have imagined the Tories would show more care and sensitivity when campaigning in Watford. But apparently not. The Tory headlines read "Lib Dems ban parents from playgrounds". The truth, as you can read HERE is completely different. That doesn't stop the Tories in Watford from blathering about this as a case of "political correctness gone mad". Sadly, it appears that child protection issues are something, even in the wake of the Baby Peter case that the Tories still feel they can make political capital from.

So aside from worrying parents, from stirring up distrust of the council, telling lies about the Lib Dems and seeking to undermine measures to protect children, what have the Tories achieved ? Well they have gained publicity for their candidate. Their "To hell with the truth and honesty" view to politics knows no shame.

So what do we learn about the Tories from this week ?

They tell lies. They don't apologise. They mislead people. They will refuse to comment when pressed on their smears. They know no boundaries and will use issues of child protection as a means of gaining votes, and actually honest, truthful and positive campaigning are just words.

I always feel sick when I see David Amess, so perhaps he caught sight of a mirror ?

David Amess, Tory MP for Southend, told Virgin Airlines that Osama Bin Laden packed his bags then had the nerve to complain about the way the airline treated him.

On top of this, he became ill on the plane (blaming it on travel sickness) and threw up in front of immigration officials.

As someone who gets travel sick on occasions (never on a plane or boat though), I have to say I have never lost the use of my legs (I've never been legless, so to speak) when I was ill.

You can read more about it HERE.

"Flipping" George Osborne saves £55000 in tax

The man who wants to be the man in charge of the country's tax at after the next general election is accused by the lib Dems today of "flipping" his second home in order to save £55k in tax.

The link to the story is HERE.

If true, it means David Cameron will have to show whether his newly found conversion to open government and decency amongst Tory MPs is confined only to the old guard and those Tories he does not get on with or whether it extends to his inner circle.

Tories rewriting history

We shouldn't be so shocked that a Tory employee attempted to change an historical fact on Wikipedia , instead we should be more worried about the Tories attempt to whitewash their past and claim the oral high ground in the wake of the credit crunch.

on BBC Radio Five Live this morning George Osborne simply ignored Nicky Campbells questions regarding Tory leader David Cameron speeches from less than two years ago when he criticised attempts to regulate the City of London and the banks. The presenter seemed to have a list of speeches and dates from Mr Cameron which Osborne had absolutely no answer for other than to say "but we do want proper regulation". It seems clear that the Tories are desperately hoping that nobody examines their "light touch" policy on The City in too much depth.

Osborne tried to justify the Tories high moral line by arguing that under Tory governments in the past no banks went under. Sadly it seems that someone who wants to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer has never heard of the Bank of Credit & Commerce International (BCCI), a large bank which although foreign owned, was based firmly in London which under a Tory government (and virtually no monitoring or regulation, as is the Tory was) went bust. Though no HBOS, BCCI went under in relatively bening times and without the Tory government having a clue that it would happen.

the Tories would be much better off holding their hands up and saying "We were wrong on regulation and we now see the need for it" rather than denying their guilty secrets and making us all suspicious of whether we can believe them about anything.

Did Simon Burns think it was Dave ?

Tory MP Simon Burns has pleased guilty to dangerous driving (after earlier saying he was not guilty) and has been fined £400.

He was pulling out of the Houses of Parliament in his Range Rover (no doubt an absolutely necessary vehicle for driving around rural Chelmsford constituency), when he pulled out in front of a cyclist, breaking the cyclists neck in two places.

It made me wonder if Simon Burns thought the cyclist might have been "Dave". I guess if it had been him Mr Burns would have seen Dave's car following him down the road.

Will Labour out-sleaze the Tories by the time the next election happens ?

Anyone old than 30 years of age will remember how in the period from 1993-1997 the word "sleaze" became almost permanently attached to the word "Tory" as the Tory party lurched from one self inflicted wound to another. When I read some young Conservative blogs I just wonder how keen they would be to be Conservative if they could actually remember what a Tory government was like. However, Labour seem to be in some sort of competition with the Tories to "out-sleaze" them before they are, hopefully, kicked out of office some time next year.

The latest from Mr Brown's sleaze merchants is that some Labour Lords are being accused of offering to put for amendments to government bills for a fee.

Truly appalling and another reason why the Tories can still rely on a comfortable lead in the polls this year as it seems that governments in crisis cannot help but shoot themselves in the foot.

Yet another South Norfolk Tory Councillor convicted

Conservative South Norfolk Councillor Jon Herbert has joined two of his council colleagues by being convicted of a criminal offence.

You can read all about the way this Tory Councillor treated Council staff HERE. The Tories campaigned hard in South Norfolk last time on the issue of crime. It seems odd that so many of their councillors have become criminals since being elected.

I note that the Tories are to consider his application to rejoin the Tory group at their next meeting. With the precendent the Tories set last time, we shouldn't be at all surprised to see him happily back amongst Tory ranks very soon, such is the Tories propensity to happily allow criminals back in their party.

As one South Norfolk resident who e-mailed me about this today said in his e-mail said "the Tory group will soon have to start turning up in shirts with arrows on them".

It would be wrong to blame Watford on all Tories, but some have got to take the blame and some ought to pay the price

The actions of the Tory candidate in Watford whose hate filled campaign against the Lib Dems may now see him go to prison ought to serve as a salutary lesson to anyone who thinks that hatred is a good enough reason to be involved in politics. It would also be wrong to blame all Tories for this or to use it as an excuse to lambast the Tory Party as an organisation. But there are some in the Tory Party who ought to hang their heads in shame over this whole affair.

In particular, as Sara Bedford points out, the Tory PPC - Rachel Joyce from Harrow West defended Ian Oakley is such a way as to make out that the scores of incidents of abuse, criminal damage and hatred were the fault of the Lib Dems, not one hate filled Tory candidate. Rachel Joyce, hang your head in shame.

If the Tories do want to leave the tag of the nasty party behind, and I do not believe for one minute that all Tories are nasty, then they need to take serious action against all those who sought to defend Ian Oakley and in particular do something about those who offered excused for his totally inexcusable behaviour.

Update : Lanson Boy points out that David Cameron was warned about the bad behaviour of Watford Tories, but did nothing. From what I have been told about Cameron by Tories and non Tories alike, it does not surprise me.

Where are they now ?

A few weeks ago Tory bloggers were queueing up to complain that poor old Caroline Spelman was being unjustly accused of paying her nanny out of parliamentary expenses and that her version of events made complete sense. Some of these Tories blamed the BBC (what a surprise), some blamed other parties, but none of them blamed Caroline Spelman.

Now, it appears, even Tory MPs are coming forward to say she was not telling the truth about her expenses and she has to go.

Where are the Tory bloggers who defended her now ?

Caroline Spelman lied about her nanny

Oh dear. After all the effort last week by the Tories and Tory bloggers to defend Caroline Spelman when she employed, so she claims, her nanny as her secretary, it appears the situation might have become worse for her.

Last week she claimed that she employed her nanny on expenses for just a few months after being elected from 1997 to 1998. Now, it turns out she lies and that her nanny was employed until March 1999.

If she has done nothing wrong, why did she lie about this ?

Since when was your child's nanny the best person to employ as a secretary to an MP ?

Caroline Spelman, the senior Tory appointed by David Cameron to clean up the Tory Party, has been found out this morning for paying her nanny from parliamentary expenses.

Now Caroline Spelman's response has been to claim that her nanny did six hours work a day for her on constituency business, and that she was paid "in kind" for her duties as a nanny. This raises three questions.

1) If the nanny was employed in working hours to be a secretary, who was looking after the child during these hours ? It suggests, if Ms Spelman is right, that the nanny only worked as a nanny in the evenings, in which case, why employ a nanny ? This argument seems very odd.

2) Should expenses be used in this way to top up a person's salary when they are only being paid "in kind" for their real job. Surely during this period Ms Spelman should have been paying her salary from herself, not letting us top it up.

3) Are we really to believe that the person best placed to do the job of a secretary to an MP is a nanny ? I don't mean to offend any nannies, but surely an experienced secretary, PA or office manager is the person besat placed to do this job.

Of course these points are irrelevent when you hear that nanny's side of the story. According to her she occasionally answered the phone and posted letters. I have to ask Ms Spelman, if she thinks this amounts to six hours work a day, which is what she is claiming, then I think she lives on a different planet from us ordinary mortals.

The question now for David Cameron is what does he do now. After all, it was his decision to put Ms Spelman in her role to clear up the mess over expenses and leaving her in place would show that the Tories don't really are about the issue. Cameron has been quick to disown and condemn his MEPs who had expenses fiddles exposed this week, but the Tories have problems between their MEPs and their leadership in the UK anyway, so this was a good opportunity for Cameron to show them who was boss.

All in all, it does rather show the Tories up in the wake of Derek Conway, the two MEPs and now Ms Spelman, to be little different from those kicked out in 1997. Tory sleaze is a disease not easily got rid of by a dose of opposition.

When MPs perpetrate a deliberate lie

The Tories claim to want to clean up politicals and the "spin" of new Labour. Indeed, David Cameron has called repeatedly for a new kind of politics.

So perhaps he might want to take action against Nadine Dorries who as has been highlighted HERE is willing to use urban myths that have been refuted by the people she quotes as reasons to support her views.

Michael Ancram's nose is right in the trough

There is noting worse for the electorate than reading about a multi millionaire seemingly coining it in at the tax payers expense, so this story from the Telegraph takes a lot of explaining ;

"Michael Ancram, the multi-millionaire former party chairman and deputy leader, claimed £22,030 - only £80 less than the maximum available to him under the controversial "additional costs allowance" (ACA). The allowance helps MPs with constituencies outside London to support the cost of running a second home.

While most MPs spend their allowances on mortgages or rent, Mr Ancram admits not a penny of the £89,927 he has claimed since 2001 has gone on mortgage payments.

Instead, he admitted he spent the money running his country home, including repainting its walls and removing moss from its garden.

Although the MP for Devizes has not broken any rules, the revelation has led to fresh calls for greater control and openness over what MPs can claim for."

Of course he has not broken any rules, but it stinks, doesn't it ?

Will Dave have the guts to get rid of all the rotten apples from the barrel ?

Derek Conway is, it seems, just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Tories taking liberties with taxpayers money.

It appears that two other Tory MP's (Ann and Nicholas Winterton) have also been caught out using a loophole which is technically legal, but as MP's morally dubious, in order to line the pockets of their family trust.

It is hard to imagine that anyone with any sense of public duty would see it as fair to switch their London apartment to a family trust and use their parliamentary allowances )remember, this is taxpayers money)to avoid death duty and then claim more than £30,000 a year in "rent" from the public purse, which is paid to a family trust set up for their two children.

This is another case of MP's lacking the moral probity to know that although something is not illegal, it is wrong. Come on Mr Cameron, show your metal and deal with the two Tories in question. I think everyone's opinion of you would rise if you show you have the guts.

Not being a crook is sometimes not good enough Mr Conway

Derek Conway has insisted to Sunday Newspapers that he is "not a crook". Perhaps, in the eyes of the law, he isn't, but is that an excuse for his behaviour ?

Is it against the law to be rude to people ? No, but it is offensive. Is it against the law to urinate in your own garden ? I certainly don't think so, but it is not particularly nice ? Yes thes emay be silly and extreme examples, but it makes the point that just because it is "not against the law", it does not make it okay.

What people do expect from MP's is a good example. In many ways, perhaps wrongly, we expect out MP's to be better than us. I think politicians should be ,if not whiter than white when it comes to their honesty, as clean as possible. This may be unattainable because our politicians are only human, but I think it is right to have the aspirations.

Derek Conway has also stated that he still believes he has "done nothing wrong."

And isn't that just the problem ? He thinks that halving his secretary's pay whilst at the same time his wife is paid top whack from his expenses is okay ? He thinks that paying his son for doing no work is okay, because it does not say he can't. In many ways it is because of people like Derek Conway that we have to have so many seemingly needless rules in order to prevent people trying to get away with taking as much as possible.

So what would the world be like if Derek Conway's rule existed. Imagine if there was no rule that said "you cannot do this" or "you cannot do that", what the world would be like. It is for the likes of Derek Conway that "keep of the grass" signs were invented.

Sorry Mr Conway, but you have done wrong and you've compounded it through your pathetic excuses. Being a politician should be about giving something to society, not about financing your family and being out for all you can get within the law. That is why you are so wrong.

New allegations against Conway show him in the worst possible light

The Telegraph today publishes new allegations against Derek Conway, the worst of which intimates that he halved his secretary's pay whilst paying his wife £40,000 a year out of his allowances.

"Mr Conway's political career was effectively ended last week after he was heavily censured for paying his son Freddie about £50,000, even though there is no evidence of any work being conducted.

It also emerged that his other son, Henry, a flamboyant regular at exclusive London nightclubs, picked up more than £32,000 from his father's taxpayer-funded staffing allowance. The MP's wife is also on the payroll, receiving almost £40,000 annually - the maximum permitted for a secretary.

Yesterday it emerged that Mr Conway halved his constituency secretary's salary at a time he was paying his sons thousands of pounds in overtime and bonuses.

Friends of Lisa Rayson, a single parent who lives in a council house in Bexleyheath, claimed Mr Conway told her last June he could not afford her £15,000 salary. She declined to comment on the allegation yesterday."

It is becoming clearer by the day that Derek Conway used his allowances as a slush fund to set his family up for life, and all this at the expense of his constituents who will have missed out by him employing less staff, and the UK taxpayer, who appear to have kept his family in a lavish lifestyle for some years.

What Mr Conway needs to do now is apologise again to parliament for the lie he told last week. He referred to an "administrative oversight", whereas he should in my opinion have declared a "deliberate effort to pay money his family from his parliamentary expenses that they were not entitled to".