LORD BHATIA
BBC’s Newsnight revealed that
peer Lord Bhatia has been accused by a charity of misappropriating £625.000 of it’s
funds. Lord Bhatia is accused of funding his own lifestyle using money
belonging to the EMF, the Ethnic Minority Foundation. But as Lord Bhatia
explained “As a member of an ethnic minority I am allowed to help myself to the
cash”.
Bhatia has previous and was
suspended from the Lords in 2010 after wrongly claiming thousands of pounds in
allowance. The wrongly claiming being that you are not allowed to claim for
things that you’ve made up.
Bhatia’s lawyers claim that Newsnight has got it wrong and the
charity misled the BBC and the charity actually owes Lord Bhatia £250.000.
The Lord forensic lawyers were
asked to explain how a charity could owe their client a quarter of a million
pounds and they said “they just do, right”. They were asked to further explain
the facts and the figures and they said “Is that the time, sorry we need to go”.
Fellow peer Lord Oakeshot stated “to
be accused of milking a charity for £625.000
is breath-taking” adding “he should be immediately suspended from the Lords
for about a week”.
Peers do tend to stick together.
Bhatia said he loaned the charity
£250k, which he had to because they were about to go bust because £625.000 was somehow missing from their bank account.
So who should we believe here? A
charity or a Lord who in 2009 and 2010 was claiming chauffeur driven mileage
expenses from the charity and claiming the same chauffeur driven mileage
expenses from the public purse. In effect he was double claiming, that was one
issue, the other was the number of miles. Bhatia said the miles he claimed were
genuine as his office was 76,000 miles away on Mars.
When he returned from suspension
in 2011 and 2012 he didn’t claim any Lords expenses. I’m guessing that he was
waiting for the dust to settle before handing in his 2011 and 2102 claims forms
in at the one time.
AUTUMN STATEMENT
In his autumn statement George
Osborne is expected to announce a rise in pension going up from 65 to 68. This
is bad news for Channel 4 because they’ll be losing a fair percentage of their
Countdown audience. It’s good news for B&Q however because they’ll have a
much larger pool to choose all their staff from. It is great that B&Q
employ older staff because it shows they aren’t ageist. Although they should
maybe have a more stringent interview policy because research has found that
15% of B&Q customers have been approached by older B&Q staff and asked
the questions “Do I live here” or “Hey what are you doing in my living room”.
Another measures is the scrapping
of vehicle excise duty - (which was renamed vehicle excise duty to stop people
complaining that they paid their road tax yet their car had just disappeared
down an enormous pot hole)- and replacing it with an electronic vehicle excise
duty system. A system that we all know won’t work and will end up being
scrapped after the government has wasted upwards of £15b on it.
Osborne will be crowing over the
economy’s .08% growth, but Labour says the government have done nothing to
address the cost of living crisis facing many people and claim on a new poster
that working people are £1600 worse off since the election. That could indeed
be true, but it’s a bit rich or a bit poor coming from a group of politicians
who left Britain’s national wealth as £5.89p and a £10 Argos voucher when they
lost power. Many people wouldn’t have been £1600 worse off if Labour had not blew
billions on replacing all the printers Gordon Brown broke when he threw at this
staff when he was in a bad mood,which was always. Not forgetting the cost of
replacing the mobile phones he threw too, and the millions he spent on smiling
lessons and tooth whitener.
It was just a pity that the
retirement age isn’t tailored to each individual. If that had been the case
Gordon Brown would have been told as on the day he took over from Tony Blair “Sorry
Gordon, that’s you 55, that’s your personal compulsory retirement age, so bye
then” and even better,when Labour gained power in 1997 Ed Balls would have been
told “your compulsory retirement age is 31, and everyone hates you anyway, so
there’s your bus pass and your Countdown mug, now beat it”.
If that had been the case, how
much of a bullet would the UK have dodged?. A very expensive one.
NIGELLA ADMITS IT
In court Nigella Lawson admitted taking
cocaine although “Celebrity Admits Cocaine Use” isn’t really that much of a
story, whereas “Celebrity Doesn’t Take Cocaine” would be. She made the
admission at the trial of the Grillo sisters who are accused of spending
£685,000 on Nigella’s ex-husband Charles Satchi’s company credit cards. The
thing is, all the spending took place during a recession which leads me to believe
that anyone who doesn’t notice that their credit card bills were £685.000
higher than normal shouldn’t be allowed to have any money.
Jurors were read an email from Mr
Satchi to Miss Lawson in which he said the Grillo sisters would get off on the
basis that she was so out of her head on drugs that she allowed them to “spend
whatever they liked”. Now why can’t everyone have a boss like Nigella?. One
that has £685.000 in the petty cash tin and doesn’t really bother with receipts
that much.
The Grillo sisters are accused of
using credit cards “loaned” to them by the celebrity couple. So why did Nigella
and Charles loan them the cards if it wasn’t to buy things with them. Perhaps
the Grillo sisters explained that they were always losing their keys and they
needed the credit cards to gain access to properties by forcing a card in between
the door and the lock. Despite what all the movies say that only works in the
movies. Because it wouldn’t create much of a plot line if a Secret Agent had to
call out a 24 hour lock smith to gain entry to house he was wanting to plant
bugs in.
It also transpires that Satchi disliked
credit cards so much that he kept a huge stash of cash in a plastic bag on the fridge. The only thing
most people have on the fridges are terrible painting done by kids attached
with fridge magnets., or a post it note saying “We are out of eggs”. In the Satchi/Lawson
household it was a big bag of cash and a post it note saying “We are out of
cocaine”.
Miss Lawson was quizzed on the heavy
outgoings of her former assistants Alice Binks, Anzelle Wasserman and Zoe Wales
who were spending a monthly average of £6000, £8000 and £3000 on trips to Annabel’s
Nightclub and on Christian Louboutin shoes.
Perhaps she should have been
questioned why she needed three assistants because she can hardly be described
as a “Domestic Goddess” if all the domestic stuff is carried out by staff.
It also begs the question,
despite being married to a millionaire how much of our TV licence fee are the
BBC paying her to do a bit of cooking using ingredients that only someone who
lets her staff spend £17k a month without batting an eyelid can afford. Like
who has ever made her truffle, pate foie gras and Abalone finger nibbles. No
one, not even the Chef at the Sultan of Brunei’s palace. And no one ever will
until Aldi’s and Lidls start selling such food items.
Yes and how much of our licence
fees goes on the people the BBC pay to sit around here table eating what she’s
made and kidding on that they are her friends. It’s sad day when the BBC have
to buy your friends for you.
The trial continues.
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