Derek Conway: corrupt, lying thief

This is Mr Derek Conway MP. Mr Derek Conway MP is, as you can see, a big man. Mr Derek Conway MP's dewlaps were funded by us. Mr Derek Conway MP is a frauster, who has fattened himself and his family by shamefully battening onto the public purse.

The extent of the monies that Mr Derek Conway MP has leeched from the taxpayer is examined in the usual forensic detail by the Ministry of Truth.

In all, and on the back of the limited information I’ve been able to uncover (which amounts to almost nothing pre-1997 in terms of registered interests because these are not provided on-line) Conway presents an interesting little set on conundrums.

His background is, to say the least, pretty unremarkable - his biography on Wikipedia has him down as the product of a state school in Newcastle, Beacon Hill boys school, for which there’s insufficient information to determine whether it was a comprehensive or secondary modern, followed by Gateshead Technical College and Newcastle Polytechnic.

From there he appears to have gone directly into politics; City councillor (and deputy Conservative group leader) at 21, staying on until 1987, four years after being elected to parliament in Shrewsbury and Atcham in 1983. He also served as a councillor on Tyne and Wear County Council from 1977 to 1983, during which period he was Conservative Group leader from 1979 to 1982. The Shrewbury ‘gig’ ran through to 1997, during which period he never rose above being a bog-standard party whip, so he would have pulled down the standard MPs salary plus whip’s allowance (and if the two were roughly at the same relative level then as they are now then we’re looking at about a premium of around 40% over a standard MPs salary throughout), which was followed by his stint at the Cat’s Protection League (£75k a year in 2000) and then back in parliament as a backbencher in 2001.

So what we have is someone from a mundane background who’s spent pretty much his entire working life in politics and who, without information on any outside interests he may have had during his spell as MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham, has what looks to be his best (verifiable) financial period between 2001 and 2003, where he was getting paid both as an MP and as Chief Executive of the Cats Protection League (so around £135-150K a year top whack in 2002) and who appears to have succeeded in putting his two boys through one of the UK’s most expensive public schools (and there’s a daughter unaccounted for as yet to go on the bill).

Mr Derek Conway MP is, quite simply, corrupt. And his response?

Mr Conway has issued an apology to MPs on the floor of the Commons. "I unreservedly apologise to the House for my administrative shortcomings and the misjudgments I made,'' he said. "No judgment from any quarter could be more harsh than that which I apply to myself."

You see? The man simply cannot stop lying: believe me, fuckface, the judgement that I apply to you is, I fucking guarantee, considerably harsher than you could ever apply to yourself.

You see, there are absolutely no circumstances in which this humble Devil would consider that helping himself to enormous sums from the public purse in order to fund a lavish lifestyle for himself and his family would ever be acceptable.

You, Mr Derek Conway MP, obviously thought that it was acceptable; oh, you may be remorseful now (although I doubt it) but you didn't hesitate to do it, did you? After all, who gives a shit: it's magic money, isn't it? It just falls from the fucking sky, doesn't it?

You are a fucking disgrace, Mr Derek Conway MP, and yet the real tragedy is that I am simply not surprised. The longer that I examine the political system in this country, and those who inhabit it, the more obvious it becomes that the whole of it is rotten to the very stinking, putrid core. The system is rotten because those who inhabit it are charlatans, thieves, hypocrites, liars and scum.

He said he had let down his family "very badly indeed"'.

Let them down? I don't think so, Mr Conway: au contraire, you have supported them very handsomely indeed. You have supported a lifestyle unimaginable to the vast majority of people in this country on the back of their work; you have fraudulently enriched yourself and your family with monies extorted, with menaces, from the hard-working population who, unlike you, actually contribute something useful to the country and their customers.

And if these were "administrative failings", Mr Derek Conway, then you should have sacked your administrator. That would be your wife then. Or is it your eldest son? Or is it your daughter who is copying and pasting articles from the internet for you, these days?

I don't think that I can state the final case more simply or eloquently than the poor, little Greek boy.

No, let’s not mince words. You are guilty, Derek, not of “administrative shortcomings”, but of fraud. You are a thief. You have taken my money and used it to enrich your family. You are a thief, and if you were in any other profession you would have been fired for gross misconduct, your former employers would be suing to recover the £75,000+ that you have stolen from the public purse, and you would be facing criminal proceedings. But for an MP?

Mr Conway now faces 10 days suspension from the House of Commons.

Fuck me, that'll have the thieves quaking in their brogues. No, DK is right. Hang them all, and let the rotting carcasses be left in place for a fortnight, crows pecking at their eyes and rats nibbling on the entrails, as a warning to the others.

And to those who criticise me for the contempt I evince for those who govern us, I say this; it is as nothing compared to the contempt they display for me—me, you, and everyone else whom they purport to serve.

Quite. Hang them all, tear down this stinking edifice of corruption, this monument to fraud, and start again.

After all, once the Lisbon Treaty is ratified, those 646 MPs will be merely overpaid regional councillors, no more able to defend our interests than a dead dog in the street.

Hang them: hang them all.