Pornography or porticos: the class divide

THERE’S a definite class war element to this row about MPs’ expenses. While it’s quite clear that each and every one of them is on the fiddle, I just find it heartening that the Tory fiddles have a touch of class that the Labour fiddles can’t match.

The Labour cheats claim for TV porno channels, disposable nappies, bath plugs and Kit Kats. The Tory blaggers go for portico erection, swimming pool maintenance, moat clearing and tennis court repairs.

You have to say, if you’re going to get your collar felt for thieving from the public purse, it might as well be for having your chandeliers hung (Sir Michael Spicer, Conservative, Worcestershire West), rather than for buying two Scotch eggs and a packet of mini pork pies (Derek Wyatt, Labour, Sittingbourne and Sheppey).

Meanwhile the real winners in this affair, UKIP and the BNP, rub their hands and look forward to next month’s Euro elections. And that, my friends, is where the real damage has been done. This isn’t just about snouts in the trough; it’s about a complete collapse of confidence in Parliament, and the subsequent meltdown of the mainstream parties.

Extremism is about to rule. The sad thing is, they haven’t even had to kick down the door. It’s been left off the latch for them.

Don't blame me when there are polar bears drowning in the duck pond

I ONCE got trapped in the ‘Green Checkout’ at Waitrose. I had a hundred quid’s worth of shopping on the conveyor belt and when I asked for some carrier bags I was told that they didn’t have any - this was the checkout for people who had their own Bags For Life.

“OK”, I said. “Can you ask the next checkout girl to pass you some bags so I have something to put my shopping in?”

Err, no, they couldn’t. This was the Green Checkout, and therefore I couldn’t have any carrier bags. So I did what any normal person would do and walked off, leaving a pile of shopping for them to clear while the queue of smarmy, self-satisfied, middle class yoghurt-knitters tutted into their hessian tote bags.

For some reason (I believe it might be an attempt to regulate my Chardonnay consumption) Mrs Beelzebub this week decided to order online and have the shopping delivered, rather than trek the 10 miles to the supermarket. So the Waitrose van turned up this morning, as promised, and decanted £70 worth of shopping in an astonishing TEN bags – three of them heavy-duty affairs and the other seven fancy plastic efforts. One bag had a single bottle of wine in it (see what I mean?); another contained just a small box of tea bags.

Ten bags. Ten effing bags. I asked the driver if he wanted to hang on a minute while I unpacked the shopping so he could have them back. Not allowed, apparently. I had to keep them.

Well thank you, Waitrose, with your shiny green credentials. I shall now have to fire up the 4x4 and take this excess baggage to the tip, so don’t come crying to me when there are polar bears drowning in the duck pond.

So this Madeleine McCann thing ...

MUCH EXCITEMENT this week as Maddy's parents release a picture of her as she would look now, two years after her disappearance from a Portugese holiday apartment while they were on the piss with their friends in a nearby tapas bar.

Which makes me think: how long are they going to keep this up? If their strategy of keeping the story in the public eye continues, we can expect similar updated pictures every couple of years. What happens in 2021 when she would have been 18? An appearance on Page 3 of The Sun? A topless photoshoot in Nuts? The mind boggles.

And meanwhile a new suspect emerges, a gippo market trader identified by a photofit sketch in a Channel 4 documentary. I publish the picture above, with no comment at all about the one alongside it.

More than a pinch of Salt

POKING FUN at the Poveratti becomes increasingly difficult as certain members of the underclass seek to outdo themselves as far as terminal stupidity is concerned.

These drooling shitbags can usually be found within the pages of Closer magazine, a publication which seems to have cornered the market in benefits barmpots. First they brought us the clinically obese Chawner family, featuring that fat lass off the X Factor, who were whining about having to feed themselves on a mere £22,000 a year in state aid. Now we have the even thicker (and fatter) Leanne Salt, the single mother of eight-month-old triplets, who happily admits that she feeds her babies junk food and let’s them drink wine “because they like it”.

Leanne, 24 years old and weighing in at 29 stones, "triggered outrage" when she revealed she let the triplets try McDonald’s, fish and chips, Wotsits and microwave ready-meals. And Hobnobs.

Her mother said: “When they are hungry it’s easier to put something in the microwave because Leanne can't move with the three of them. They get Bernard Matthews’ turkey roast, roast beef, chicken. They like it all liquidised.

“I once did pasta and they wanted it, so I chewed it like a mother bird and gave it to them. They loved it - and had two bowls. It was the same with fish and chips - I chewed it for them because it was a bit hard.”

She added: “I don't see the harm - I did it to my own children.”

Hmm, one of whom is the child that turned out to be 29-stone Leanne then? The mind boggles.