GLENYS KINNOCK, the new minister for Europe, has amassed six publicly funded pensions worth £185,000 per year with her husband Neil, the former leader of the Labour party.
They have already received up to £8m of taxpayers’ money in pay and allowances, he as a European commissioner and she as a member of the European parliament.
The pair are already drawing payments from three of their taxpayer-funded pensions. Glenys Kinnock, 64, soon to be elevated to the House of Lords alongside her husband, is collecting a teacher’s pension and from next month is entitled to another from Brussels with an estimated annual value of £48,000.
Lord Kinnock, 67, is receiving one pension as a former MP and a second for his service in Brussels, together worth more than £112,000.
Glenys Kinnock is simultaneously drawing a ministerial salary of £83,275. Her job entitles her to a further ministerial pension.
After she retires from her job she will be eligible to draw a further UK-based pension related to her service as an MEP, worth £19,730 a year.
Neil Kinnock, who resigned last week as unpaid chairman of the British Council to avoid “perceived conflict of interest” with his wife’s ministerial role, receives a pension of £83,089 for his service as European transport commissioner between 1995 and 1999 and vice-president of the commission from 1999 to 2004.
He receives a further £28,936 a year for his 25 years’ service as an MP, including time as leader of the opposition. He also claimed £13,700 of allowances while a member of the House of Lords during 2007-8.
During their time in Brussels both Kinnocks claimed a housing allowance on top of their incomes, even though they lived in the same home. This alone would have netted the couple almost £600,000 over 10 years.
“The Kinnocks are Brussels’s very own Lord and Lady Expenses,” said Mats Persson of Open Europe, the London-based think tank that calculated the Kinnocks’ earnings.
“One has to question whether Lady Kinnock is a suitable minister for Europe. How can she distinguish between the interests of Britain and the interests of the institutions that she and her family have relied upon for their income for so long?”
The precise amount of taxpayers’ money the Kinnocks received for their European roles has not been made public. However, Open Europe has calculated that the couple claimed £6m in staff and salary allowances and would have received a further £1.7m if they had claimed the maximum to which they were entitled. The Kinnocks did not dispute the figures when showed them by The Sunday Times.
Glenys Kinnock, a teacher who went on to become the most-travelled British MEP, clocking up almost 130,000 air miles in a five-year term, also employed her daughter Rachel as an executive assistant.
Kinnock failed to mention that she employed her daughter in declarations of financial interests covering the period since 2004. The practice of employing family members has since been banned. Rachel is now in charge of events and visits at Downing Street.
The Kinnocks’ Cambridge-educated son, Stephen, 39, director of Europe and central Asia at the World Economic Forum, spent eight years in Brussels in senior positions with the British Council. He is married to Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the leader of the Danish Social Democrats, who was an MEP between 1999 and 2004.
Glenys Kinnock has also been accused of using her influence in the Socialist group to support a “campaign against transparency”.
Marta Andreasen, the EU whistleblower, was sacked by Neil Kinnock, then an EU commissioner, when she raised concerns about possible fraud in the EU accounts.
This weekend Andreasen, now a UKIP MEP, said: “There was a clear conflict of interest as, in support of her husband the commissioner, Mrs Kinnock lobbied with the Socialist group to vote against allowing me to reveal my findings in parliament.”
Kinnock has also been identified as claiming her allowances even on days when there was no official business.
Her spokesman said: “As minister of state, Glenys Kinnock will not draw from her Westminster pension. She has a small contributory teacher’s pension and has contributed for 15 years to the European parliament’s additional voluntary pension scheme. She will be entitled to a ministerial pension.
“All payments to Glenys Kinnock were made as the salary to which she was entitled as an MEP, exactly the same as all UK MPs. Staff and office expenses were exactly the same as all other MEPs. No payments could affect \ judgment as a minister and she will properly fulfil all her duties as a UK minister.”
Makes me fucking livid. It's not as though any of the fucking Kinnock tribe have ever done anything useful.
The Penguin
Sentenced To Death
Jack Straw - You Know You Can't Trust The Cunt."When it comes to politicians advocating open government the best advice is to ignore what they say and focus on what they do.
Yesterday, Gordon Brown used the dreaded word “transparency”. I have been campaigning for five years on freedom of information and had to go to the High Court to force the disclosure of MPs' expenses, so it is with some satisfaction that I now hear the Prime Minister issuing statements about the need for open government that I couldn't have written better myself.
Mr Brown proposed extending the scope of freedom of information. The funny thing is that he suggested this once before, in October 2007. It must have slipped his mind.
Back then, in the first flush of office, he gave a rousing speech on civil liberties. He announced a public consultation about extending coverage of the Freedom of Information Act to institutions that received huge whacks of taxpayers' cash but had no obligation to be publicly accountable, such as city academies, Network Rail, and private companies providing public services.
The consultation closed in February 2008 and the results were supposed to be implemented no later than November 2008. Need I say that nothing happened? In January I inquired about this phantom consultation. I asked the Ministry of Justice for a copy of the submissions and timelines of progress on implementation. Not getting a straight answer, I filed an FoI request (as I do).
You can guess what happened next. My FoI request about the progress of freedom of information was rejected. The ministry claimed that all the information was exempt as it involved the “formulation of government policy”. So much for Mr Brown's airy claim that “this is the public's money. They should know how it is spent.”
Now Mr Brown has put in charge of the FoI reforms one Jack Straw, of the Ministry of Justice, (a department with one of the shoddiest records in answering FoI requests). He is to head a public debate on this secret public consultation. When it comes to making bureaucracies accountable this is the snail's pace of progress.
How unlike the lightning speed with which new bureaucracies are created. Two were magicked into life just this week: A shiny new department for Peter Mandelson and the ironically-titled Government Democratic Council. I say ironic because in the true spirit of Yes, Minister its creation is shrouded in secrecy. It appears the members will be ministers appointed by the Prime Minister in secret and it's unclear how transparently they will formulate reforms for a more transparent democracy. Here's betting it will be behind closed doors."
Telling it like it is, and possibly the finest investigative journalist in Britain.
The Penguin
" THE SUN HAS GOT HIS HAT ON
A commentary by Gordon Brown
Gordon's got his hat on...
The joy (1) bells are ringing, The songs birds are singing (2), And ev'ryone's happy and gay (3). Dull days are over, We'll soon be in clover (4), So pack all your troubles away(5).
The sun has got his hat on (6) Hip-hip-hip (7) -hooray! The sun has got his hat on (8) And he's coming out today.
Now we'll all be happy (9) Hip-hip-hip-hooray! The sun has got his hat on
And he's coming out today (10).
He's been roastin' peanuts out in Timbuctoo (11), Now he's coming back to do the same for you. So jump into your
sunbath (12) Hip-hip-hip-hooray! The sun has got his hat on, And he's coming out today.
Never saw the grass so green Never saw the sky so blue (13) What a lot of fun for ev'ryone, Sitting in the sun all day.
All the little boys excited, All the little girls
delighted (14)What a lot of fun for ev'ryone, Sitting in the sun all day.
All the little birds are singing All the little gnats are stinging (15) All the little bees in twos and threes Buzzing in the sun all day. (16)
Now we'll all be happy (17) Hip-hip-hip-hooray! The sun has got his hat on And he's coming out today (18)
Notes:
(1) This is who I am. Had I been born a girl, I would have wished my parents had called me Joy. And rightly so.
(2) These songbirds have every right to sing. And I will always be there to defend their right to sing and to sing along with them. This is who I am. If I did not think I was the right person to be singing, I would not be singing now. But those of them who choose to sing from a different songsheet must expect no mercy.
(3) We also have many very able women represented in the Cabinet, from time to time.
(4) I have never forgotten my father telling me to eat up my clover. He was strong in his belief that clover is and remains a most nutritious food. It may lack the passing glamour of smoked salmon or the easy popularity of corn flakes, but that is what it is.
(5) I should remind you that all our present troubles have been created by an international downturn beyond our control. I am determined to pack them away.
(6) The sun may or may not be under surveillance. That is a matter for the security services. But an innocent planet, going about its daily routine, should have nothing to hide.
(9) And those who persistently refuse to be happy will have to answer for it.
(10) I cannot say this often enough.
(11) I remain in close touch with the President of Timbuctoo, who is a good friend. He is in full agreement with me that these are global problems requiring global solutions, best dealt with by someone with real experience.
(12) Focus. Energy. Determination. I believe that I have the right qualities to help the British people to leap into that sunbath.
(13) Yet more evidence of the very real progress we have made, and continue to make.
(14) Look, thanks to measures we have taken over this past year, all the little boys and girls continue to be both excited and delighted. This is my purpose. This is who I am.
(16) I am going to be totally candid. These bees make a great team. They are all behind me.
(17) And those who refuse to be happy will be made to be happy.
Paul Goodman, MP for High Wycombe, tells his local paper why he is not going to stand again.
"For Parliamentary democracy to work, a robust executive - strong government - must be balanced by a healthy legislature - by a flourishing House of Commons. That the Commons has been sick for many years is incontestable. The tragedy of the expenses scandal is that the patient, in consequence, is likely to receive a bigger dose of the medicine that's causing the illness - namely, professional politics.
Not so long ago, MPs were elected representatives, paid little by the taxpayer but free to work outside the Commons. MPs drew on their expertise of business or the shop floor. The chamber was a forum in which the clash of different interests was resolved for the public good.
However, the representation of interests came to be seen as outmoded at best and corrupt at worst. Restrictions on MPs outside earnings were imposed. Relatively swiftly, they became largely dependent on the taxpayer - and therefore, increasingly, professional politicians rather than elected representatives: a "political class" different to and therefore separate from those who elected them. Consequently, MPs got smaller. The media got bigger. Powers leaked away to Europe, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the quangos.
A few weeks ago, this journey reached its logical destination. In an act of class revenge, Gordon Brown pushed through Parliament a measure compelling the remaining MPs who work outside the Commons to declare how often they do so.
The result will be a further injection of state power and patronage - the medicine that's sickening the patient. The spirit of the age is against citizen MPs, and few working business people, lawyers, doctors or (dare I say) journalists will long be able to fend off local rivals who pledge to be in the Commons for every hour of the working day. Parliamentary elections threaten to become dutch auctions of self-abasement.
In the short term, a few older MPs with knowledge of the outside world will hang on. But some of their younger colleagues will quietly leave, telling friends that the loss of earnings is the last straw that broke the camel's back - on top of vanished privacy and declining status. And, in the medium term, much future talent will avoid the Commons altogether.
Most of the rest will get in quick, scramble to the top, and get out quicker. The Commons' institutional memory will weaken. With a number of exceptions, MPs will become cowed and toiling drudges. Fringe eccentrics and exhibitionists will provide the necessary colour, coming and going like celebrity TV contestants - briefly exalted and just as swiftly toppled.
Forceful Ministers and effective Select Committee Chairmen are likely to be scarce in such a shallow pool. And the reputation of the Commons will continue its downward spiral. Such is the Pandora's Box that the national media elites have helped to open - one which, needless to say, they won't be able to close. In making this case, I've little personal interest, since my earnings outside Parliament are minimal."
The Penguin
"I'm Worth Every Fucking Penny, You Tight Cunts. And Free Grub!"
"My Pension Is Very Nice, Thank You, I Get A Wedge Like This Every Month!"
