John Thurso’s Expenses Online

I note that the expenses of sometime Lord Lucan lookalike and MP for the Hyperborean North, John Thurso have been published on the Parliament website.

Having a quick scan through them, I cannot see that those sections which were redacted had public interest. For instance, we know that he rents a flat close to the Palace of Westminster for about £1,400 p.c.m.; not buys and flips juicy properties. What interest is there, apart for burglars in August, to know where?

No doubt this will displease John Mackay – Labour PPC for the constituency who perhaps mistook Thurso for the Earl of Caithness when he derided him for being landed gentry living in a Castle – or all-round comic relief Gordon Campbell who believes Thurso to have been at “his innocuous worst“.

I have to say though that I would not have objected to being able to spend £400 pcm on food on top of my wages, as Thurso appears to have done with unerring regularity.  As I have said before, however, the attitudinal problem throughout the House of Commons has led to even honest and frugal MPs been seen as modern-day Stakanovites. The pigs ear they made of instigating Byzantine expenses rather than being thought to be awarding themselves a pay rise, which would have cost similar or less, invited this. From the start, it has been clear to me that Thurso has most certainly not swung the financial lead.