This is Baroness Uddin who became Britain's first muslim peer in 1998. The Baroness lives in the East End of London. Sounds as if that's handy because it's only four miles from the House of Lords.
She bought a two bedroomed flat in Maidstone in 2005 and of course there's nothing unusual in that because people do have homes outside London. What is unusual is that the Baroness named the flat as her main home to claim almost £30,000 a year in accommodation expenses from the House of Lords. Unfortunately for the Baroness residents from the five other flats in the same block all say they have never seen her there. They could see through the windows that the bedrooms were unfurnished.
Last weekend, hours after the Sunday Times had challenged Uddin about her "main residence", the baroness's BMW 4x4 was spotted at the Maidstone flat and members of her family arrived. Yesterday she appeared at the flat but refused to prove it was furnished by showing a reporter round. Wonder if she's claimed for furnishings via the John Lewis list. The answer is very possibly yes.
She has claimed that her main residence has been outside the capital since 2001 but refuses to say where, despite repeated questions. How can she get away with such behaviour? What are the people who supposedly check expenses doing? This is theft, nothing more, nothing less.
Update: Iain Dale has just posted about this but adding the information that the East End of London home in which the Baroness lives with her family is a Housing Association property built for low income residents and she pays a highly subsidised rent. The woman has no shame.
Posts
24 comments:
I suspect Baroness Udin isa quite a decent person. But in nulab ranks she will have been told "this is quite normal, everyones doing it - Tony McNulty, Jaqui Smith, its your entitlemnent.....youd be daft not to "...."the commissioner will even approve it"
Institutional corruptiion we must all forver gauar against - becuse power does corrupt - even the good guys - unless the rest of us are vigilant
I disagree with you AWC, the woman is a thief. Not even the 'rules' cover claiming for a home which is unfurnished and she's never lived in.
Iain Dale says the home she does live in is a Housing Association property which is have a highly subsidised rent. She's stopping someone on a low income getting a decent home. More corrupt behaviour.
Subrosa, " Swine Flu leaflet ", re your post, got your message and understood that to be the case at the time, thanks.
As Aye We Can! suggests Baroness Udin has probably been corrupted by Nu-Labour and some deserving soul was likely evicted to make way for her Housing Association secondary home.
This one beggars description. The huge problems for key workers of getting affordable housing in London are well known and this wife deserves being put in the pillory for her greed and utter selfishness to let the people vent their feelings.
On the same issue, I caught up with question time last night and I hope Wedgie Benn's son (with the mansion in Essex) amd Andrew Lansley went home from Yarmouth on Thursday in a thoughtful mode after the audience made their views clear on MPs' expenses and a second job paying £24,000 for 12 days' work. Mr Lansley must be some brain for that sort of money.
AWC:
That is standad NuLab special pleading. 'The rules are not clear'. When the mob eventually gets around to dealing with this shower of murderous, parasitic bastards their defence ought surely to be: 'Wrong? Wrong? Show me where it says we can't hang Baronesses from lamposts! Eveyone's doing it, you know. We were told it was OK'.
Shame and Labour? Impossible.
This is not just "milking" the system, this is fraud. Her neighbours will testify they have never even seen her there. She needs to be stripped of her title, sacked from her job for gross misconduct and the money needs to be paid back to the taxpayer.
She has clearly broken the law.
subrosa
everybody with two homes is potentially depriving another of a home.
Don't understand why it was unfurnished she could of claimed for new furniture.And anyway not sure of the truth of this story as the very next day she and all her family were seen at the home in question...Giggle
Ah glad you got it banned. I'm not smart with technology and it's just luck that keeps this blog going!
You surely don't agree with AWC?? He's joking of course, he must be.
Haven't listened to QT yet Richard but will do now there's something of interest to hear. Thanks.
She can't get away with that excuse Vronsky, tell me she can't...
Bad choice of words right enough OR, I will do better in future.
My thoughts exactly Sue and nothing less will do for me either.
Niko, I bet the neighbours now wish they'd kept silent with all her family banging around the place now. There will be a frantic effort for at least one of them to visit every day and bang all the doors I'm told from a reliable source :)
just to be clear - i am not remotely defending the baroness - even in the nulab bubble she has a mind of her own, and what she has done looks corrupt to me, compounded futher, if as now reported, her real home is a subsidied housing association one.
My point is that the system corrupts, distorts people's judgements,. I can think of quite a few former comrades of mine who 20 yrars ago would never have dreamed of milking the system, but do now. They have become amorsal surrouned by chancers and a party that backs illegal wars, promotes the likes of Damien McBride, and keeps the guy who appointed him - plus Tony McNulty, Jaqui Smith and co in the highest of offices In this conext they convince themselves - "if they do it, get away with it - what's a £100k accomodation allowance fiddle?"
Still a fidddle, and she should still be booted humiliated. But as I said,(and I dont have a clue about her) like most labour folk probably starting out, did so with honourable intentions
Nulab - more deadly than Swine Flu
Thanks AWC. Yes of course some MPs and MSPs start out with the idea that they're doing public service etc etc., but the rules made by themselves can quickly turn them into demi-gods who have quite forgotten what the job really is.
MPs of course are far more guilty because we here have a reasonably accountable system which the public appear to accept.
>>She can't get away with that excuse Vronsky, tell me she can't...
She will. They do. The really sexy thing is ... so can we...(diabolic laughter)
AWC
I'm sure that what you are saying is true, because I have personal experience of it being true. I once car-pooled with a prominent Labour activist. He was a perfectly nice guy. He had worked very hard for the local party when they were in bad times, and raised a lot of money for them. As a reward (he told me) they asked him to drive around a very desirable local council estate (just built, still unlet, all privately owned now) and asked him to pick the house he wanted.
He saw nothing wrong with this - it was a proud boast. My point is that I wish his instincts had been the same as other people's. I, and most people I know, would have refused that offer, knowing it to be wrong. Why has the Labour Party (like the Tories and the Libs, to be fair) attracted people who cannot make such simple, self-denying judgements? I worked in an environment where I received such offers regularly. So did the people around me. We all refused. It is a perfectly easy thing to do.
I'm in agreement with you Subrosa. There is simply no excuse for this. Everyone else is doing it is playground nonsense for 7 year olds. There are Honourable and Noble, and sometime Rt Honourable, Noble, Gallant, Learned and all sorts of honourifics... and they are all much older than 7.
The bottom line is this woman has, like so many of her peers (yeah pun intended), stolen vast amounts of money from us, knowing full well this was just plain wrong. Other people go to prison for it.
I noticed the other week a headline in one of the tabloids (Daily Mail, I think), about this woman who had stolen £16,000 from Social Security over the last 10 years, by neglecting to inform them that her infant son had died.
Horrific offence in terms of disrespecting the little lad's memory, but, that was a total of £1,600 a year. Some of the ruling classes have skimmed that off the taxpayer before lunch!
She doesn't look like a Baroness to me - I'm sorry but she doesn't!
We would all look regal in such finery JPT.
We hear of this kind of behaviour on a daily basis now. It has become commonplace and yawn inducing, and therein lies the danger. When we start to shrug and go on with our daily grinds.
WV = merit
You're right scunnert and hopefully that's the power of blogs because they are capable of reiterating theft like this whereas the MSM go onto the next scoop.
Vronsky
Graft is not unique to Labour (nor unique ro Britain/Scotland) but I do agree with you that it is way disprortionatly high in Labour ramks, Scottish Labour ranks in particular
Why? In part I think it is the phsycology of people who grow up with little money or power then finding themsleves with a lot. Rich Tories , although unethical in other ways and strategiucally wrong are I have found usually straight as a die on money matters - even when I worked on STV you often had to insist they took programme fees explaining everyone else got them - they thought appearing on TV ( often to get a doing!) was a public service!
There also is I think a territorial thing with labour, most prominent in West Central Scotland, Glasgow especially. Here I think it is encapsualated in the phase "labour area" For other parties this phrase means a seat they hold , for labour it means an area they run, own almost. This lead to guys like your actvist friend being offered a house without even thinkig it is wrong - like your uncle offering you a car becsue you have looked after his sister etc. They just can't see the differnce - or dont want to. You even saw ths when AMS came in and list MSPs tried to quite legitimately visit a school or community centres in their list constituency - labour almost reacted as though this was trespass, burglary - the audacity of these MSP visiting "their seat" an area they run, they own - always have, always will - as if the voters in these ares were their serf, their vote for them implying their servitude to them for four years , going on forty them
Finally thre is the Nulab additinal factor - one in which labour activists, councillors, MSPS MPs see and smell coruption on an isntitutional and daily basis and at the highesty level, Whether it the grace and favour homes of Prescott, Hoon and co, or Cherie Blair lecture tour - where obscene fees so blatantly related to being the wife of the who had aalone backed the Republican Regime inits illegal war, The fees Cherie got was quite unrelated to any box office asppeal or book sales. It was just a kickback - propbaly if you looked closely all funded by Enron or AIG money that we now know did not exist. When you see this , and Damien McBride on £100k plus plus perks it just seals the deal. You can't beat them so join them - especially now with those pesky nats and DC Tories threatening to bring the gravy train to an abrupy end - DC for a decage the SNP forever. So make hay now - worry about it later
I agree with all those who said the woman ia a thief.She is.Morals come from within you regardless of what anyone else does and if she was clever enogh to get a title surley she should know that what she did is steeling. Or did it not matter so long as the money kept coming.Pure greed.Is that why she went into politics?Why is she a baroness-what great did did she do to justify? I dont tjhink we need her sort in the Lords-can she not be sacked?
Post a Comment