Self-Righteous Nick Clegg: Start With Rochdale's Stygian Stables?

Many people who have undertaken detailed studies of the allowances claims of one or more Liberal Democrat MPs may find themselves rolling on the floor laughing at the self-righteous primping and posturing of dear old Nick Clegg MP in today's Daily Telegraph.

"Will demand for change continue or will the political establishment succeed in sweeping it under the carpet?" the clown Clegg asks. He should start by asking Paul "Bananas" Rowen MP, Lib Dem MP for the multiply deprived and shoddily run town of Rochdale, and a so-called front bench spokesman, what on earth he is up to, under carpet sweeping wise.

Gravy Train Paul - a bogaciously burgeoning body builder, alas in the manner of Sir Cyril Smith MBE rather than Arnie Schwarzenegger - has been threatening legal action against Labour Prospective MP Simon Danczuk over light-hearted leaflets questioning his allowances in a basic democratic accountability, free speech kind of way.

Albeit with some Labourite flier-writer calling Rowen "bananas" over allowances claims, including, naturally enough ... a 40p banana. And another Labourite flier-designer crystallizing the public mood against most MPs of all parties with the gravy train composite above. Zeitgeist in pen and ink.

Though to be fair GT Paul is more likely to be seen with an Old Sozzled Henn than with a Long Deep Screw On the Beach, or Between the Sheets, or whatever that cocktail he's grasping is supposed to be.

If this is libel The Guardian and The Mirror have each joined the fun by reporting Rowen's absolute lack of legal judgement. As it were. No more slumming around in the New Statesman and the Eye for Rochdale Libdemologists. This is big time bananas this is.

The sections on the leaflets apparently penned by Mr Danczuk seem pretty measured and reasonable, and the ensemble even with witty cartoons and so on more responsible and reasonable than much of Rowen's teams under and over the radar personal attack shenanigans. Character assassinations on priests and deceased community leaders for goodness sake! Attempts to resuscitate lies of decades past! Vicious phone calls and emails or threats thereof!

Meanwhile Gravy Train Paul, or Growin' Rowen perhaps?, whose team has now collectively trousered more than a million pounds in pay and allowances from the taxpayer, seems to be not untypical of at least some of his Lib Dem MP colleagues in the region. Exploiting various little angles and gimmicks on the allowances regime. In fact there's a bit of a pattern emerging, for Lib Dems only.

All these wheezes, GT Paul suggests, "within the rules" as he sees them:

Paying a sizeable "consultancy fee" of taxpayers' money to his party's regional office for rather mysterious services to Rochdale constituents;

Initially paying office rent to his local party, who had about half the space but bizarrely - in a you-pay-us-to-be-here contrivance - only passed on about half the amount given them that year ... to a Lib Dem owned and controlled company ... that gave 90% of the money back to that local party;

Buying an extraordinary giant folding and stuffing machine;

Taking a "hoarding" advert at the local football ground which he pretended to have paid for from his own funds ... but he used the supporters' own funds, from the taxpayer, he's hoarding alright;

Taking appallingly poor value for money adverts for non-party political surgeries on party political leaflets, paying obscene amounts of taxpayers' money for adverts that simply would not work;

Submitting a receipt for £9.99 "TV Services" at a hotel, in the hubbie-of-Jacqui-Smith eyebrow raising category as well as the famous banana, knob of butter, carrier bag and so on;

Taking over the employment of one full time and one part time political worker, as defined by the party's own accounts, from the local Lib Dem party, with these people calling themselves election agents year round and being highly party political, not to mention personal;

Having an unaccountable and unauditable "Printing Society", some believe as an "off the books" money laundering fund raising mechanism;

Awarding a lucrative contract - with tax payers' money - for Web Services to a local publisher whose main publication Rochdale Online is being referred to widely in the town as Rowen Online, such is its editorial and comments/forum bias to their benefactor's cause and against his opponents, though rather hilariously they bit the hand that feeds by suggesting that Rowen's buying ads in political leaflets scheme was unacceptable;

Organising a highly lucrative, but annoyingly compulsory and steep, Lib Dem group tithe as leader and PPC, declared to Electoral Commission in 2005 but strangely neglected in that regard ever since;

Tithes on "special responsibilities payments" alone - if at the rate asserted by Lib Dems and former Lib Dems - produce well over TWICE the turnover to require annual accounts, but none have been submitted for several years;

Being a remunerated Director of a company registered in Uganda whose UK parent became a landlord to a Rochdale MBC Department during Growin' Rowen's tenure and who own a large number of residential, commercial and licenced premises in the area;

Presiding over an office milieu where rough-edged corner boys supposedly working for Group, party, constituency or ego in such a way that tax payer accountability is completely missing;

Continuing to take councillor cash too for two whole years, though he or someone taking his name in vain claimed it was but one, and failing to provide a promised list of claimed charitable donations;

I could go on but that'll do for now.

"What are they up to?" people ask. "Who pays such and such and thingymejig?", "What are they all supposed to be doing anyway?", "Why does no-one much go to his advice sessions? Is he crap?", "Are they really cooking beans on a camp stove in there? Instead of patronising local kebab, pizza, fish and beer businesses?"

To say that these applications of allowances, provided by the tax-payer, and these other arrangements are "within the rules" seems a bit of a stretch to put it mildly. I'd quote the good book and call them "grey areas" myself. Bananas, possibly.

But, ho hum. They may be "within the rules".

But the question is not "within the rules?" anymore anyway. Now the public's sense of right and wrong has been re-calibrated the question for Rowen is quite different. Are these arrangements for tax money acceptable and defensible anyway?

Point is, Nick Clegg needs to stop spouting plagues on other parties' houses. He needs to roll up his sleeves up and/or divert the River Roch down to Drake Street. To clear the continuous supply of horse or perhaps donkey doings from Growin' Rowen's stinking stables.

Clegg again raises the prospect of the sort of US-style "Recall Ballot" that would see Rowen out of a job in a flash. LDV also suggests he emphasises the importance of electoral reform for the health of British democracy:

Frankly, there are far too many MPs, and far too many of them can do what they like because they’re in a safe seat. They know that they could put a blue or red rosette on the back end of a donkey and they’d still win because they only need to gain a minority of the votes in their area.

There are far too many Lib Dem MPs I'll give you Nick. There are also some RAW nutty slackers in Rochdale and others who might argue that the Lib Dems HAVE actually stuck a yellow rosette on the back end of a donkey and performed just this trick themselves. Eeeyore! Eeeyore!

STOP PRESS: Though the Red RAW boys are now repeating Lib Dem chit chat that's gathering momentum. Suggesting that those Lib Dems have had enough of the out to grass former demon deputy head-teacher. The Lib Dems may be planning to change donkeys midstream.