Boris is in the Independent for pigging out at the Birmingham Hyatt at the taxpayer’s expense. Well, there you go, we’ll make a note of that one. It’s not like it’s a lot of money and he is Mayor. I’m rather with Martin Hoscik on this one. I’m much more interested in finding out if any London boroughs or other organisations took investment advice on Iceland from Butlers.
However, there’s another angle on this one which the Independent doesn’t do a particularly good job of fleshing out:
A separate entry lists £2,192.50 for hospitality, but this was spent by a Tory member of the London Assembly.
Why so coy about the identity, I wonder? The entry just reads:
HYATT REGENCY BIRMINGHAM LTD,Hospitality,”2,192.50″
while for comparison Boris’s expenses read:
HYATT REGENCY BIRMINGHAM LTD,Hotels & Lodgings,”1,955.25″
So our mysterious Tory managed to spend more on food and drink than Boris spent on actually staying in the damn hotel (which is a pretty posh joint, I used to swim in the pool there).
Now, one place where Boris’s accountability drive actually has some tangible results is in the publication of detail of expenses above £1000, but the London Assembly and Mayor already did this in broad terms anyway, with the bonus that the name of the Member is included. Given his commitment to accountability, Boris presumably can’t object to a bit of cross-checking between the LA Gifts and Hospitality declarations and the £1000 list to see if the same dates and places crop up. In fact, that’s presumably the point of releasing them, so let’s have a look for any gifts and hospitality taken in Birmingham’s Hyatt Regency Hotel in late September 2008 by Conservative AMs. There are only two entries:
- 28/9/08 – Brian Coleman – Dinner at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Birmingham – Mrs Theresa Villiers MP [MP for part of Coleman's constituency]
- 29/9/08 – Brian Coleman – Conservative Friends of Israel Conservative Party Conference Lunch at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Birmingham – Mr David Lewis CBE, Conservative Friends of Israel
[pending clarification from the Conservative Group, the next section has been removed]
Tags: 9 Comments
9 responses so far ↓
Mais, quelle surprise, Monsieur Coleman!
When it come to expenses, he’s hotter than mustard…
Arf.
The Amphibious Member of Barnet and Camden is a freeloader of Olympian proportions.
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Brian Coleman (aka Mr Toad) has GOT to go!:
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what about £40,000 wining and dining that cunt Chavez? i could could of done for less than 100 quid
Charmingly put, as ever. What about it, at least London got something out of it. What does London get out of Coleman troughing with the Conservative Friends of Israel, apart from opprobrium from the thinking part of society?
As I understand it, the only role of the members of the London Assembly is to ask the Mayor a few questions so I’m rather surprised that somebody claims expenses for a trip to Birmingham and to have a meeting with Conservative Friends of Israel. Are there any guidelines? Who monitors these guidelines?
To make it clear, Coleman was declaring that he’d been fed *by* the CFoI, not claiming expenses for feeding them. His name comes up because he’s the only Conservative AM known to have dined at the Hyatt during the party conference in late September, when (according to the Independent) an unspecified AM *did* claim £2k on expenses.
It could have been Coleman, or one of the other four AMs known to have attended and who declared hospitality (although none of those were at the Hyatt), or it could have been one of the other AMs who presumably didn’t receive any declarable gifts or hospitality. Coleman is nothing more than a suspect, although with a degree of circumstantial evidence the others don’t have, plus a lot of what the police call ‘previous’.
But yes, there is a clear question to ask why the AM for Barnet and Camden is so interested in foreign affairs. I bet he opposed the London overseas offices, too.
There’s also the question of whether whoever ran up £2k of hospitality did it alone or was entertaining someone.
Who did this 2000 Pounds come from? London council tax-payers? For going to a party conference?
As far as I understand it, GLA funds, since it’s on the list of >£1000 expenditure Boris introduced.
My position is going to conferences on public funds is OK for Mayors, but not for AMs. Livingstone of course went to his own conference, but I seem to remember he also spoke against PPP at the Conservative conference a few years back.
Neither of those I particularly object to coming out of public funds, but £2k for unspecified ‘hospitality’ by an anonymous AM from a party that rails against public waste? Not on, I think.