UK home secretary ‘gay porn’ scandal
p2pnet news view TV | Politics:- British home secretary Jacqui Smith says she “mistakenly” used her parliamentary allowances to claim for a TV package which included two adult-rated features, and that she’ll pay the money back, according to the BBC.
Or as Bloomberg News puts it »»»
U.K. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, under fire for claiming taxpayer-funded expenses for pornographic movies watched by her husband, should be allowed to get on with her job, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.
The “sensational revelation” that Smith’s hubby used “taxpayers’ cash” to view soft porn flicks, “is not, in itself, a hanging offence,” says David Hencke in The Guardian.
After all, she’s, “facing far more serious allegations: that she spent £116,000 of her second home allowance to, among other things, pay the mortgage interest on her main family home in Redditch,” says the story, going on, “She is now under investigation by the parliamentary standards commissioner. She may not have broken the rules, but it shows the rules are broken and in need of urgent reform.”
What will happen to Smith remains to be seen, and UK prime minister Gordon Brown has tried to, “mitigate the inevitable bad publicity by agreeing to an inquiry by an independent anti-sleaze watchdog, the committee on standards in public life,” says Hencke, adding:
But, “unfortunately for him Sir Christopher Kelly, its chairman, is a thorough sort of chap and wants a detailed inquiry into the expenses system. The government will probably not get its findings until next summer, well after all the damage has been done.
“Meanwhile, it would not be exaggerating to say that the Commons are gripped with blind panic. Rumours circulate that the damaging information has already been leaked to the Sunday papers – and one of them is preparing for a field day of revelations that will end with the public turning on unpopular MPs. It could even cost a number of them their seats.”
What of Smith’s husband, Richard Timney?
“I think we can therefore safely assume one of two things,” says James Delingpole in The Telegraph, to wit »»»
Either: 1 The Smith/Timney household was entered on the night in question by a very cheeky gay burglar, who sneakily sat watching Raw Meat 3 while poor Mr Timney was fast asleep.
Or 2. Mr Timney is a closet gastronome who downloaded Raw Meat 3 on the perfectly understandable assumption that it contained exciting new variants on the recipe for Steak Tartare.
Whichever of these is true, he says, “I would like to think as that as a nation we are now able to exonerate poor Mr and Mrs Timney of all charges, and never snigger at them ever again. Not even behind their backs. It would be wrong, wrong, wrong.”
BBC – Smith ’sorry’ for expenses claim, March 29, 2009
Bloomberg News – Brown Backs U.K. Home Secretary Smith in Movie Expenses Row, March 30, 2009
The Guardian – The expenses time-bomb, March 30, 2009
The Telegraph – Jacqui Smith’s husband was definitely not watching gay porn, March 30, 2009
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March 30th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
She resembles Beatrice Ask, the Minister of Injustice of Sweden!
March 30th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
See that nose?…It got like that by continually sticking it in the trough. Greedy fookin bitch….