The charge against Sir John is rather eye-watering. £17,000 claimed for servants' quarters and £600k profit on a second home with no Capital Gains Tax paid,
And tonight, directly following an interview with Sir John Butterfill himself, John Strafford of the Conservative Campaign for Democracy has said that the MP is "toast". This follows David Cameron's "alarm" at the situation.
On Newsnight, Sir John said that it takes "20 minutes" to travel the 80 miles by train from his six-bedroom second home to London Waterloo. Do we have trains that travel at 240 miles an hour yet? Not that I'm aware of. The suggestion this is the MP's main residence is clearly ridiculous and his claim that he need not pay Capital Gains Tax because he used a lot of his own money to renovate the property won't stack up with HMR&C however much Sir John may wish it.
During the rest of the Newsnight interview, Sir John bumbled on and claimed to have been misrepresented in the press without really going into any detail as to why.
His situation is remarkably similar to that of Hazel Blears so if David Cameron or his constituents does deselect him, then Gordon Brown will be in an even more difficult position than he already finds himself in.
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2 comments:
He can afford to be toast as he announced in March 2008 that was standing down at the next election.
For a change we have had a MEP publish his expenses with an explanation what the headings mean. So it seems the 2 SNP MEP's haven't being claiming for the sake of claiming.
http://www.alynsmith.eu/mep-allowances.html
Never has so much attention been paid to so many backbenchers by so many news outlets. Does make you wonder why MPs so rarely feature otherwise - I'm sure the constituency work is noble, but where's the debate about where our country is headed? Where's the passion and the poetry?
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