What’s the point writing an article stating someone is pointless?

As for the censored info, it is very revealing and more for what it conceals than reveals.

Eg, pick an MP, have a look through and consider what has been censored. Then ask why. How this is not a story is beyond me.

(You might note the seeming absence of John Lewis receipts. That’s because the John Lewis logo etc have been censored on tons of receipts. If that isn’t a story, I don’t know what is.)

Oh the jaded cynicism! You’ve been into politics for as long or longer than me I think!

On a positive note (every grey cloud has a slightly less grey lining), I was actually pleased to be able to scan through the expenses of my local MP – yes, of course there was nothing juicy in there (except for lots of taxi receipts which had been filled out in the same handwriting, but hell, who hasn’t done that?) – I do appreciate the fact that this information is now available in the public domain; it makes the UK a little less of a shamocracy than it was before.

The only other thing that I found interesting was the amount of information which had been blacked out.

Anyway, that’s my two cents worth!

I think it’s Guido’s popularity that he finds unbearable.

What a pointless article – are you feeling left out?

As Sunny is away, someone has to carry on the magnum opus, don’t they?

Why Guido and Dale Must Be Ignored, Volume 37.

This article reeks of jealousy, grow up.

The writer doesn’t seem to understand the mingled contempt and anger seeing these ‘redacted’ claims arouse. And, as others said, there is something pathetic about writing a few paragraphs sneering at the time people are spending writing a few paragraphs.

I think it’s Guido’s popularity that he finds unbearable.

No, I’d say wringing out the dregs of the expenses scandal for a few more drops of wingnutty goodness is likely to be a very, very dull. I actually thought geekery of this sort was why blogs were invented.

Me, I’ve always said that Guido is the Sid Hudgens/Danny De Vito character in LA Confidential minus the wit, the charm and the noble motivation, and that people who consistently refer to themselves in the third person might as well tattoo I Am a Hideous, Horrible Twunt onto their foreheads to warn off the unwary.

As pointed out above though, my antipathy isn’t provoked by any political or aesthetic considerations – Lord, no. It’s because we’re all apparently still at high school, and I am jealous of Guido’s many girlfriends and his amazing, pendulous wang.

Flying Rodent – you sad individual.

Get back to your lentils you naughty child.

Some stuff is going to have to be blacked out. No-one’s seriously suggesting MPs’ bank details should be included, surely. And once some stuff is blacked out there are always going to be people who say they’ve been censored and that MPs have got something to hide.

I accept that some dodgy claims wouldn’t have come to light if censored versions only had been reported on, but I don’t know how to get round that unless you think that security/identity concerns are of no importance at all just because they’re MPs and therefore fair game. A citizens’ jury that could look through them but not take them away? I dunno.

Get back to your lentils you naughty child.

Sorry, not high school – primary school.

I don’t normally agree with the pieces written here, but I agree with this one, and have blogged similarly: Flogging a dead horse.

The Telegraph picked the carcass clean weeks ago, for fuck’s sake.

While everybody’s squinting at scans of crumpled paper, Gordon Brown is still Prime Minister, busy churning out blatant lies about his spending plans.

Shahid Malik is still in a job, despite thinking that Muslim’s Don’t Do Direct Debits.

Mandelson is still running everything.

Priorities?

I think it’s the fact that Guido’s blog reeks of genuine public opinion, like it or loath it, that puts people like Unity into a self-contradicting tizzy. In other words, it scares those who cling to a procrustean view of human nature and British society: and so it should. Guido’s blog exposes more than the *biens pensents* care to admit.

Unity! You of all people can’t possibly complain about people having too much time on their hands. Yours are the longest blog postings on the Internet for Pete’s sake!

Hey it wasn’t so pointless after all (tongue firmly planted in cheek)!

The Guardian has just reported the following claims:

• Geoff Hoon £80.46 on a magnifying mirror

• Humphrey Malins £4 for a toilet brush

• Michael Gove £39.99 of seagrass; £20 on mugs from Tate Modern, and £134.30 on “Elephant lamps”

• George Osborne £47 Two DVDs of his own speech on Value for Taxpayers’ Money

• Chris Huhne £119 on trouser press

• Ian McCartney £593.59 on a paper shredder

• Alan Duncan £19.55 for biscuits, tea, coffee … and mint imperials

• David Cameron £656.44 on “burning oil” (presumably for an Aga or similar device)

• Christopher Fraser More than £1,800 on cherry laurel and red cedar trees

• Ed Balls £58.75 for sponsored match ball for Ossett Town AFC; £1.05 on peanuts, and £7.99 on the book Reasons to be Cheerful by Mark Steel

• Harry Cohen £35 on curtain shortening; £43.17 on storage trolleys

• Garry Streeter 40p for a creme egg

• David Heathcoat Amory £2.99 on slug pellets; £2 on mouse poison

• Ann Cryer £183 on having three pictures framed

• Sir Peter Viggers £174.72 to repair lights on olive tree and clean pond pump

• John Reid £1.50 on ice cube tray

• Austin Mitchell 67p on ginger crinkle biscuits

• Andrew Rosindell £1.31 on jellied eels

• John Prescott toilet seat – part of maintenance totalling £112.52

• Michael Spicer £609 to trim hedge around “helipad”

• Margaret Beckett £600 on hanging baskets

• Bob Marshall Andrews £200 for pair of Kenyan carpets

• Cheryl Gillan £4.47 on dog food

• Paul Murphy £35 on toilet roll holder

• Nick Clegg £1.19 on tea lights

• Lembit Opik £19.99 on wig for charity event

• Charles Hendry £270 to have windows cleaned three times

• Daniel Kawczynski £108.10 for Polish lessons

• Maria Miller £154.61 for books including two biographies of Tony Blair and a copy of Vikings Don’t Wear Pants

Wait…

• George Osborne £47 Two DVDs of his own speech on Value for Taxpayers’ Money

So that’s £23.50 for a DVD of a George Osborne speech… What, seriously?

I’d rather slice open my ball-bag, and watch as the warm goo dribbles out, than spend a minute watching that porcelain-faced virus speak. Or is that just me?

“I’d rather slice open my ball-bag, and watch as the warm goo dribbles out, than spend a minute watching that porcelain-faced virus speak. Or is that just me?”

No, no.
I think we’d all rather you did that…

Spot the chappy who isn’t getting enough blog traffic.

Tsk, sore loser.

And for some light amusement – do have a read of this fisk of bloggers self-righteousness

http://fountain.blogspot.com/2009/04/laffaire-smeargate-blogosphere-responds.html

Aaron, that is rather excessive don’t you think? The £23.50, not your balls, I’m with you on that one

Seems to me there will be a lot of juice when/if the DT publish all the unredacted material on Saturday. Minus credit card details we’d hope and perhaps the odd address. There will be Tory flippers as sure as eggs is eggs. And there may well be a load of Lib Dem naughtiness if Rowen and Leech are anything to go by.

Both rent from their parties. Leech apparently takes a 75% share of the ultimate rent – though that is not documented. Whereas on the basis of the first years accounts Rowen paid 200% of the actual full year rent in just 2/3 of a calendar year. And 90% of that head rent was gifted back to the party anyway as the whole place was owned by the Lib Dems and their pals anyway.

Both have taken adverts in party political propaganda. Rowen has given a contract to a local publisher who is nice to him. Rowen has a football ground hoarding. Both appear to employ activists with the word on the streets being that they do political campaigning more than parliamentary casework etc.

Both also have unincorporated, uncharitable, unauditable, unaccountable “printing societies”. This is the sort of thing that is still there to be teased out I reckon. More significant than Leech going through a new TV on the Tax every year or so. Or even his paying one TV licence on his ACA and another on his Incidentals. That is explicable. Perhaps he has a TV in the office??

Creaming off thousands to subsidise political activity is not justifiable IMO. In some ways though naive onlookers may think it is OK it is a lot worse than simply pocketing money or buying luxuries. It is in effect delayed gratification. Invest in political campaigning and stay in the game for another term.

Both of them also had councillor allowances (leech three years, Rowen two years) and have yet to account properly for what they did with these. Both say not pocketed. Leech says variously “gave to party”, “gave to office” and the like. Rowen says “gave to charity”.

And there’s a knob of butter too. Last Tango in Rochdale?

Plenty more to come I reckon.

Flying Rodent:

Me, I’ve always said that Guido is the Sid Hudgens/Danny De Vito character in LA Confidential minus the wit, the charm and the noble motivation,

And in the film, Sid— [spoilers] which would doubtless have Staines’ dittoheads blogging furiously about some ‘NULAB Konspiracy’ if the equivalent happened to him.

Unity – it depends in whether you go after the obvious candidates, your political opponents, or start hunting round the backwaters – but then , having a dig around beats wor– oops, here comes the boss…look busy…

21

The last thing labour want is people to find out about the ‘paying rent to the local constituency association’ scam. Labour are neck deep in that one.

Sorry, this story is totally wanked out by now.

Is anyone working on a blog about the riots in Iran or the racist attacks in Belfast?

I’m not just getting at you Unity, it’s just that we don’t seem to be getting blogs on the real issues at the moment.

Ah, at last! Flip over to Pickled Politics, Rumbold’s doing Iran!

Shatterface:

That is precisely the point I’m making…

…well, that and poking a stick at the MSM for aping Guido, which is the bit that his doughty band of camp followers haven’t quite managed to figure out yet…

Since you won’t publish this, you little shit, I may as well tell you straight that you and your shitty political views aren’t worth a toss more than your equally shitty Party. You’re a sanctimonious CUNT and it’s clear for all to see. FOAD, waster.

Shatterface

One is scheduled for 9.30PM. Maybe I’ll bring i forward.

I have. 3… 2… 1… BAM!

“Grant Thornton”

Who the fuck is this clown?

Can we stop mentioning Guido? The standard of his winged monkeys isn’t what it was.

I’ve never quite understood the mentality that leads people to start comments with “since you won’t publish this”.

If the comment is published, the commenter looks like an arsehole.

If the comment was never going to be published, there was no point in the commenter commenting anyway.

My only conclusion is that people who write those comments think that by saying someone won’t publish something, they are somehow exerting pressure on them to publish it after all.

tim f, you’re a dickhead. I posted my comment because I believed it would be reviewed by “Unity” (what a daft name) before appearing. That’s the way these things usually work unless the forum is unmoderated. So kindly fuck off, nob-head.

“Unity” (what a daft name)

I know, what where his parents thinking? Well, at least his parents weren’t cousins unlike some…

“Unity” (what a daft name)

Yep, and my parents really did christen me ‘Redpesto’. It was a family tradition.

This is a rather smug snobbish post. All power to them I say. If MPs have been greedy, semi-corrupt and hypocritical then they should be exposed and I’m grateful to those that have taken the time to do it.

Grant Thornton

I suggest we let your comments remain for historical record.

I suggest Kalms stress tips

Grant, can I just say Shatterface isn’t my real name and I suspect that Unity, redpesto, etc. aren’t using their real names either. This isn’t exactly unknown on the Internet.

And as you’ve probably noticed by now, posts aren’t moderated BEFORE publication and – to this sites credit – are rarely removed afterwards.

You have to come up with something better than ‘nob-head’ to be censored.

I know, I’ve tried.

Even my suggestion of incest hasn’t been taken down, and that’s quite the low blow…

In other news, I understand Unity’s point. But I don’t think it is fair to call it the Guidoisation of the MSM, it is just a continuation of piss poor journalism in general.

Tittle-tattle has always played a large part in the MSM, gossip columns are big business, Guido isn’t particularly special except for being more instant and more acrid and less vulnerable to libel than the MSM.

I don’t doubt it’s a pen-name he adopted for himself. That’s what makes it all the more inexcusable. Maybe he’s gay?

Why should we take anyone seriously who posts comments here under a pseudonym? How old are you, 13? Does your Tory hating club have a secret password? Do you wear a cape over your hairshirt?

“Unity” has form as a curmudgeonly hater. This strikes me as a variant on a Chris Paul ‘nothing to see here – move along post’.

There *is* something to see and plenty of voters want to see it – scores of MP’s pissing away public money whilst the Labour establishment that you blindly defend looks the other way.

You are out of touch and out of time, not unlike the Labour Party.

You’r quite right., the site’s completely pointless. If I we’re you I’d ask Guido for your money back. I’m sure the request will be favourably received

Contrarily, I do believe that there is some utility in the “live blogs” where people can comment on the redacted expenses claims. They demonstrate how much fuss people will make about the price of pest control or a packet of biscuits without full knowledge of the claim.

I have reservations about the quality of the information held by the Telegraph, and the newspaper undoubtedly made a few mistakes. And they made those mistakes using better quality data than the current commenters on live blogs possess.

So now we know:
1. If we want to keep MPs clean, publish their expenses claims with minimal censorship. Block out bank details and credit card numbers, but retain addresses. An MP’s address should not be considered a secret.
2. Open disclosure of expenses works. MPs can only claim for what is justifiable by their work.
3. Over censorship of expense claims does not work. It simply generates uninformed speculation.

Grant,

Maybe he’s gay?

Hmm, maybe you have stumbled on something there. Gay? We can’t be having that on the internet, can we? Because we all know what the gays are like. Mostly paedos, right? Or at least look a bit like that, eh?

I think you may well have an unanswerable argument there, Grant. Well done. And how original of you.

One of these days I swear that I will succeed in giving one of Guido’s pet fucknuts an embolism and it will all be worthwhile…

I didn’t realize you let gays post here – somebody think of the children!

‘One of these days I swear that I will succeed in giving one of Guido’s pet fucknuts an embolism and it will all be worthwhile…’

Unity, I’ve found the dummy you just spat out; email me with your address and I’ll post it back, so that you have it ready for the next time you get jealous of Guido’s far superior site.

Get a life you bunch of sad bastards!

Why does everyone love Guido so much they want to attack someone that doesn’t? Chill out, can’t we all be friends? (except grant obviously)

Surprise! the left don’t like Guido, the right don’t like the left. How fun of everyone to illustrate this point so tediously… Guido wouldn’t run the Ministry of Truth, Unity wouldn’t run Guido Fawkes. They both have their niche and it seems to be working quite well.

Well said, Left Outside.

However, Unity has a history of playing the man not the ball so he really has it coming. He’s fairly bright in a pub quiz sort of way but he allows his ‘leftness’ to get in the way of his ability to put a coherent case (when he’s talking about politics and not bashing Chiropractors or whoever he’s hounding currently). If he sounded a little less like an embittered 1970’s student union committee class war throwback, he might be taken more seriously by both lefties and righties. Just saying.

Unity: One of these days I swear that I will succeed in giving one of Guido’s pet fucknuts an embolism and it will all be worthwhile…

Yep – can I haz tickets?

Had what coming?

A bunch of piss poor abuse from a bunch of humourless fucknuts who’re way too thick to cotton on to the joke.

You’re clearly mistaking me for someone who gives a fuck.

As its obviously not going to sink in, no matter how many hints I drop, the clue’s in the reference to the ‘Guidoisation of the MSM’, a line that Guido tends to use any time he manages to sucker the MSM into trying to play him at his own game – which, I might add, he’s considerably better at playing than either the mainstream press or most of his coterie of dumbass camp followers.

This entire post is a rib at the MSM for trying – badly – to copy Guido’s shtick and nothing more.

Hey, Gayboy,
You had your ass whipped today. Ain’t nuthin’ personal. Maybe in a few years’ time you’ll come to realize that the three main parties in the UK are incapable of implementing policies which their global controllers disapprove of. It’s all a sham, see; an elaborate Punch & Judy show designed to convince the simple-minded pleb voter than his views actually count for something. The political class have had a terrific run at our expense now for several decades and still people like YOU can’t see what’s going on and commentate like you’re actually seeing some meaningful debate. How dreadfully sad…..

[For the avoidance of doubt, 'Vee' is posting from the same Spanish IP address as 'Grant Thornton', so what we have here is a fucking sockpuppet]

If there’s anymore gaybashing in here, I’ll show you what it’s like to be bashed by a gay guy. GRRRRR

oops, i think you mistook me for giving a shit about the labour party.

Great God alive!!! A sock-puppet on an internet forum??? That must be a first!!! ROTFLMAO!!!
Actually, I’m in Oslo!

Anyway, enough frivolity for one evening, gentlemen (and others).
I’m off back to Guido’s site. It’s much more fun there. You mainstream party supporters will hopefully wake up one day and join us – once it sinks in you’re being betrayed as much as anyone else.
So long, suckers!!!

* We have a tight comments policy aimed at fostering constructive debate.
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* Abusive, sarcastic or silly comments may be deleted.
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Not doing a very good job policing your own comments policy, are you, Unisex?

i’m glad that policy is not being enforced… it would mean there would be no comments left whatsoever.

though personally i could do without the homophobic ones, they are soooo 1980s/playground style.

Oliver, Please allow me to explain my “unacceptable” views.
There WAS a time (about 40 years ago) when in Britain we treated homosexuality as something of an amusing novelty. You may recall some of the endearing gay characters that were created on TV during that period. They were affectionately rendered and gave rise to zero offence. I was personally sympathetic to gays back then and would happily have jumped in to defend any of them that were being bullied.
Now, fast-forward to the last 10 or 20 years. It’s just changed. It’s now ugly and almost militaristic. It’s not the same innocence. Homos are “in yer face” and God, don’t we know it. I left the UK before it became compulsory.
I know as the Liberal Bigot that you are, this will do nothing to improve your understanding, but maybe a few others will see what I’m getting at. Ta-ta!

jacknight:
I think it’s the fact that Guido’s blog reeks of genuine public opinion

Oh yeah, that’s what that smell is. Paul Staines is full of genuine public opinion.

Pee:
I left the UK

On behalf of Britain: Thank you.

i get what you’re getting at… you muppet.

Gregg, It’s a pleasure.
I now live in an homogenous society where there are vanishingly few immigrants (they tend to get shot before they can beach their craft as you may have seen on the news) and proper marriage and children are the norm (thank God).
Plus we are not governed by edicts from Brussels; our government makes its own laws in our national, naked self-interest. God be praised.
One last thing: from where do you derive the authority to speak on behalf of the entire British nation? If you can’t provide some evidence I regret I’ll just have to assume you’re some smarmy, Commie shit with the usual attitude problems that attend the lower intellectual classes.

from where do you derive the authority to speak on behalf of the entire British nation?

I was the only one of us who could stop laughing at you long enough to post.

Now, so far, that’s homosexuals, immigrants and the unwed. Are there any more neurotic obsessions you want to reveal to us before you goose-step away?

Oh, I forgot, you also mentioned the “global controllers”. Jews or lizard-men?

Anyway, you limp-wristed ladies seem to have all gone to bed. Enjoy your nightmares about how you’ll survive next year without a job and with sky-high inflation, taxes and interest rates. Who do you think will be the best man to save the country at the next General Election? Brown, Cameron or Clegg? BWAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAA!!!!!!!!

Seriously, for the very *last* time suckers, goodnight.

You bottom feeders still at it?

What is this, Harry’s Place?

F-ing twats the lot of you. Socialist scum. Shame on you.

Gudio’s blog must be very dull if his followers feel the need to re-read this every couple of hours.

We’ve never heard of Guido Fawkes or Liberal Conspiracy. Our lives have felt no emptier for it.

[Possibly channeled by BenSix]

I admire the restraint of people jsut ignoring this thread now its been hijacked

What kind of sad tosser buys their own fing trouser press ???