The accusation, from Tim Ireland (first paragraph quoting the The Times):
[Nadine] Dorries claimed £9,987.50 for Marketing Management in June 2007 for the design, layout and production of an annual report and for consultancy. She says she spent the money, and posted a copy of the report on her website. However, it does not appear to be professionally produced.
…There is no record of any payment made for distribution of this ‘annual report’, it does not appear to have been published on/through Dorries’ site at any stage (despite her claims to the contrary)
…I seriously doubt that any opening argument about the strained budget of a local hospital can justify spending close to £10,000 of taxpayer’s money on what appears to be two-page ‘report’ promoting Dorries’ campaign to reduce the availability of abortion.
The response, from Nadine Dorries:
For anyone who cares to know, blogger, Tim Ireland, who chooses to write blogs which are malicious, un-founded and for the most part totally untrue, has been warned by Police not to enter Bedfordshire.
However, this doesn’t stop him from wasting tax payers money via freedom of information requests and then letters of complaint to the information commissioner when they don’t work. Stopping that comes next! My poor staff :(
It should be recalled that when Tim raised the issue of Marketing Management back in February, its director, a personal friend of Dorries named Lynne Elson, complained both (a) that Tim had failed to contact her for information and (b) that his perusal of publicly available documents about payments amounted to “intrusion”.
Tim’s new post also carries a statement from the police stating that the Crown Prosecution Service has decided that there is “insufficient evidence” over the matter to prosecute Dorries for claiming expenses dishonestly.
As I’ve observed before, Dorries’ sense of entitlement is legendary – for instance, her response to the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority guide to expenses was a mocking post on her blog with a photo showing how her copy of the document had supposedly been blown out of her office by a gust of wind onto a nearby roof. It is possible she sincerely believes that a persistent critic of her political activities ought to be restrained and suppressed by the police.
UPDATE: It should also be remembered that Dorries’ own blog is “malicious, un-founded and for the most part totally untrue”. She’s used it as a platform for a spiteful and intrusive personal attack on her lover’s estranged wife, as well as to smear as a benefits cheat someone who criticised her on Twitter.
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“warned by Police not to enter Bedfordshire”?
What bloody planet is this insane bitch inhabiting?
It’s not the bloody Wild West, and Britain is not ruled by a scriptwriter from an episode of Bonanza. If she thinks that police are allowed to “warn people” not to enter certain counties – then David Cameron should be forced to provide proof that this is the case, or admonish her for bringing her miserable political position into even further disrepute.
And the relevance of this to a blog about religion is …?
In the days when I took an interest in Tim’s travails, before my eyes started to glaze over at all the “he-said she-said” (I suppose I’d just better say that whoever started posting false rumours and true addresses is still a bad person), I seem to recall Tim didn’t like bloggers who had a blogging and comment chorus to amplify and echo their every word – even if said chorus were doing it off their own bat.
Now, why bother leaving a comment like that? When I come across boring or irrelevant items on blogs I tend to skip over them and move on, yet you feel the need to explain to me why I shouldn’t be highlighting Dorries’ dishonesty or showing a bit of solidarity with Tim. Sounds like a guilty conscience to me.
“showing a bit of solidarity with Tim”
I think there’s a hefty difference between expressing the distaste that we all feel at the anonymous smears on Tim, and banging the drum for whatever he happens to be blogging – or whoever he happens to be attacking.
And do I detect a hint of ad hominem ? That might sound like a guilty conscience to me, if I thought that way. But I won’t speculate on your motivation.
[…] a public figure who is paid from the public purse, her political activities – and, crucially, her expenses – should not be subjected to hostile scrutiny. To this end, she employs false accusations of […]
[…] following whistle-blowing by a former employee, although it was eventually decided that there was insufficient evidence to proceed. Dorries has also been investigated by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner over her […]
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[…] Although (as a commentator below reminds me) the police did at one time refer Dorries to the CPS over a matter on which the CPS eventually said there was “insufficient evidence” to proceed, she was […]