Sinn Fein and the Sunday Telegraph
Interesting that the Sunday Telegraph should go for and their expenses. Presumably it was because the Daily Telegraph wanted to keep the next most obvious story - the Shadow Cabinet - for their Monday edition. Although Sinn Fein reckons it's a deliberate tactic by what it calls the "tory led media" in the run up to an election.
Martina Purdy and I didn't have a lot of time to discuss the story off the back of the two Inside Politics election interviews today. But it seems to be that the Sinn Fein MPs are in a different boat when it comes to whether this is or isn't politically damaging.
It's fair to assume that the average Sinn Fein voter doesn't have a lot of time for the Westminster system, given that they are voting for openly abstentionist MPs. So the imperative for Sinn Fein is not so much to counter the general claim of abusing the system, but to demonstrate that as individuals they are not benefitting.
On that score Pat Doherty has pointed out that Sinn Fein MPs take an average industrial wage (around £300 a week, if I remember a recent Martin McGuinness interview correctly). and that, having not bought the properties in question they don't stand to gain personally from their future sale.
That said, it would still be interesting to know more about the precise relationship between the landlord and the party.
Another unanswered question at this stage is who is the Northern Ireland MP who claimed more than £2000 for 2 TVs (they sound like smarter models than the ones bought for the Sinn Fein flats)? The claim featured in yesterday's Telegraph.
In my rush to plug the Politics Show interview with Shaun Woodward I forgot about today's Grand Prix which meant the programme went out earlier than usual. If you missed it you can catch it again at 10.20 pm on 91Èȱ¬1 tonight. He comes out fighting, pointing out that the license fee payer pays for 91Èȱ¬ biscuits just as much as the taxpayer pays for the biscuits in an MP's constituency office. And he should know, given that he's been both a 91Èȱ¬ producer and a politician.
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