There’s a fiddle called employing the family. There’s also a fiddle called recycling expenses as Party funds

A few of us here trying to lift and separate at the top end of the Blogosmear do research issues in order to push nasty revelations out into the public domain. We’re a sort of cross between what Private Eye used to be, and what the Sunday Times Insight team was before most of you were born.

One such venue is Harry’s Place,where with a judicious glance down the bloke’s subject headings on the left hand side, you’ll encounter a piece about MPs recycling their expenses.

It’s a variation on the scam described by Ken Livingstone in a previous Slog posting, and refers to an unnatural practice within Cleggover’s squeaky-clean Libdem tendency-and elsewhere.

You claim false expenses tax-free (with a tad more subtlety than Rab Nesbitt aka Jim Devine) and then recycle it into the next campaign designed to re-elect the Member.

At the minute, Party apparatchiks and leaders are busy suggesting all this grubby corruption is down to flawed individuals – the so-called ‘small minority’. It is not: it is part of a culture created and encouraged by controlling Party Whips to ensure the continued obedience of the Lobby Fodder.