More expenses drivel

As the expenses 'crisis' drags on into another tedious week, the Daily Bigot Mail is trying to crucify another MP - who just happens to have a brown skin - for NOT fleecing the tax payer for tens of thousands of punds for a second home in London that hardly ever gets used, and instead opting to stay at a hotel:

Labour MP Khalid Mahmood is the latest to be sucked into the expenses scandal.

He stayed at a five-star hotel in London with his girlfriend and charged hundreds of pounds to the taxpayer as his second home allowance.

Mahmood, who is the MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, claimed a total of £1,350 for nine nights stay over a four-week period in 2004, when he stayed at The Bentley hotel in Kensington.

He also claimed £1,225 for five nights stay in 2008.

Mahmood used the hotel after separating from partner Nasim Akhtar, with whom he lived in Wembley, though this address was not given on his 2004 claims form. (1)

This was the top story on the Daily Mail's website. The Mail has never run the risk of leaving people in any doubt as to its opinions, but now they're flogging the ground where the dead horse used to be.

It seems MPs can not only not have homes in London, where they might reasonably spend a fair bit of time, they can not sleep in hotels either. Perhaps they may sleep in cardboard boxes under bridges, but are they allowed to claim the cost of the box to the tax payer, or must they thrash some homeless type and turf them out of their box?

1 - "Labour MP spent £2,575 staying in 'riot of gold, marble and silk' hotel with girlfriend," unattributed article, publised in The Daily Mail, 23rd of May, 2009. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1186818/Labour-MP-spent-2-575-staying-riot-gold-marble-silk-hotel-girlfriend.html)