Millionaire Peer Stole £20,000 in Expenses

Another Blair-appointed Peer scamming the British taxpayer whilst literally rolling in cash:

A millionaire peer could face a police probe following allegations that he claimed £20,000 in expenses by pretending to live in a small flat occupied by his brother.

Businessman and philanthropist Lord Bhatia nominated the two-bedroom apartment in Reigate, Surrey, as his 'main' home in 2007.

But he has lived in a £1.5million home in Hampton, south-west London, 15 miles from the House of Lords, for 20 years.

By claiming he lived outside the capital - the flat is 23 miles from Westminster - he was entitled to up to £174 a day for overnight accommodation in London.

The perk allows peers to be reimbursed for the cost of a hotel when the Lords is sitting or maintaining a second home.

Concerns that Lord Bhatia was milking the allowance system were strengthened after he failed to remember the address of the Reigate flat when questioned last week.

He was forced to look up the road and even then spelled the name of the block wrongly.

The flat - just a mile outside the boundary of what is considered London for the purpose of Lords expenses - has been his brother's home for three years.

Last night Angus Robertson, Scottish National Party leader at Westminster, said he would ask the police and Lords authorities for urgent investigations.

He said: 'This seems to be a misuse of parliamentary money to fund private or family arrangements.'

Lord Bhatia, 77, was made a peer by Tony Blair in 2001 but sits on the neutral crossbenches.

He 'flipped' his main address from London to Surrey in October 2007. This allowed him to claim £12,247 in allowances over the next six months.

In theory he could have claimed at least as much again - figures have not yet been published - before changing his main address back to London in January.

Lord Bhatia's company Casley Finance began renting the flat In March 2006. Sultan Bhatia, its company secretary, moved in at around the same time after a marriage break-up.

Lord Bhatia said he rented the Reigate flat because his home in Hampton was too big and he and his wife wanted to downsize to a smaller property.

Asked why he did not use the flat during Parliamentary holidays, he said: 'It's entirely up to me to decide to stay in either of the two houses.'

Lord Bhatia, who insists he acted within the rules, said he switched his main address back to Hampton because he became too ill to travel to Reigate.

Sultan Bhatia said he 'looked after' the flat and his brother stayed there 'from time to time'. But a neighbour could not recall Lord Bhatia living there.

Lord Tebbit Calls Sharia 'the Law of Gangsters'

Staunch Tory Norman Tebbit has made a speech to the House of Lords which likens Sharia law to the system of arbitration which gangsters the Kray twins once enforced on the streets of East London.

Tebbit said:

'Are you not aware that there is extreme pressure put upon vulnerable women to go through a form of arbitration that results in them being virtually precluded from access to British law?'

He was backed by several Lords. including Lord Pearson of Rannoch who issued the invitation to Geert Wilders which led to the latter being banned from the country.

His speech came after ministers confirmed the role of Sharia courts in certain civil matters, claiming that certain Orthodox Jewish communities in Britain have similar autonomy on some matters:

Last autumn, ministers confirmed that sharia tribunals may deal with family and divorce disputes among Muslims, and that sharia decisions need only the briefest scrutiny in a law court to win full legal effect.

Five sharia courts currently operate mediation systems approved under the 1996 Arbitration Act.

Their decisions on divorce, money and children can be approved by a family court if they are submitted to a judge for approval.

There was predictable anger and cries of 'ignorance' from Muslims:

Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: 'We can only wonder whether Lord Tebbit has ever set foot in a sharia council to see what they actually do before making such a baseless and ignorant comparison with the workings of the Kray brothers.

'Both Muslim sharia councils and Orthodox Jewish Beth Din courts exist to try and help resolve civil disputes amongst individuals through a voluntary process of arbitration. They are entirely legal and have to operate firmly within the law.'

Sharia law is perhaps one of the most primitive and barbaric legal codes which man has ever conceived of.

It has no place in a modern, civilised society, and it certainly has no place in a non-Muslim country.

This country needs as many people to stand up and say so as possible.

Muslim Peer Fiddles Expenses

It seems that those people who were appointed to their positions simply because of their name or the colour of their skin just won't stop embarrassing New Labour.

A couple of months ago 'Lord' Nazir Ahmed was jailed for killing a man in a car accident, around two weeks after he threatened to lead 10,000 Muslims on Parliament if Geert Wilders was permitted to screen Fitna in the House of Lords.

Well, he now has some competition from 'Baroness' Manzila Pola Uddin, Britain's first female Muslim peer.

Bangladeshi born, Uddin has lived in Britain since she was 13. She was the youngest woman ever to be appointed to the House of Lords, sworn in in 1998. As she took the oath, she swore in by saying "Almighty Allah" - and she took her seat in the Lords.[4]

Here she is comparing Geert Wilders to Hitler on BBC news:


Yes, I know what you're thinking - with that level of rationality and eloquence, it's a surprise they waited so long to make her a peer.

She actually is quite sharp, however. It turns out that she is living in subsidised housing association accommodation in Wapping, East London. Despite the fact she is well above the income bracket of those who normally get subsidised housing - she holds two jobs, one with the Home Office and the other with insurance company Zurich.

She has also held several company directorships. So she lives just four miles from Parliament and pays £104 rent per week. Incidentally, she is even registered to vote in Wapping.

Despite this, she bought a flat in central Maidstone and claimed it was her main home. This enables her to claim accommodation and other expenses designed for MPs and peers who live outside London on the flat.

She has been doing this since 2005, and is roughly entitled to £30,000 a year - so she has claimed in excess of £100,000 for staying away from her 'main home'.

Her neighbours claim the flat has been unoccupied since she bought it, however. In fact, they claim that when the story broke, Uddin popped round in her BMW to put up some curtains and place a doormat outside.

A plumber confirmed that he recently went round to fix the boiler - only to find it needed topping up with water, very common if the central heating has not been used for some time - so he says.

So in other words, she has been involved in fraud on a grand scale. She now faces a police investigation, but she won't be the first Muslim peer to try prison food.

There was an excellent piece in the Telegraph yesterday by James Delingpole, who described listening to a radio debate between Uddin and a Muslim doctor. The latter was saying how multiculturalism had failed Muslims and Asians in the UK, and integration was the way forward.

Uddin vehemently disagreed, insisting that 'discrimination' and 'poverty' were the causes of the incidents the doctor was describing - such as brides who spoke no English being imported from rural Pakistan and Bangladesh and then treated as virtual prisoners and slaves, locked away from the Kuffars and their intoxicating freedoms.

Well, she is depriving one of these poor victims of a subsidised house - but I suppose any values she may have disappear when she looks at her bank statement and sees yet another way to undermine the infidels who took her in and raised her up.

It seems that when people such as this succeed we pay more, not less to keep them. Valuable lessons must be learnt here before it is too late.

It's not even as if she tried to hide it - people just weren't interested enough to look. This is from her Wikipedia page:

Alleged expenses fraud
In May 2009, a Sunday Times investigation revealed that Uddin claims on her House of Lords Expenses that a flat in Maidstone, Kent is her main residence on which she has claimed £30,000 per annum in tax-free expenses since 2005. This therefore allowed her to also claim the controversial second home allowance on her London property, a scheme supposed to only compensate politicians living outside London for the cost of accommodation close to Parliament. However, residents living near the flat in Maidstone stated they have not seen any occupiers in the flat since Uddin purchased it and that it has remained completely unfurnished.[1][10] Uddin's husband even denied having a property in Kent when questioned on the issue by the Times, and she appeared on the electoral roll at her London address from 1996 to date. Additionally her Facebook page lists states how she has lived in the East End of London for over 30 years.[1]

Baroness Uddin claimed a total of £29,675 for accommodation in 2007/8, a time when the maximum daily accommodation claim was £165 a day. Her bill represents a claim at the maximum possible rate for 179 days, more days than the Lords actually sat that year.[11]
MP Angus Robertson, called for an investigation on the report to the House of Lords authorities and the police,[12] Based on Land Registry records, it shows Uddin bought the two-bedroom flat on the first floor in central Maidstone in September 2005 for £155,000.

Neighbours living near Uddin's other property in Wapping have insisted they have seen her daily coming and going, she is known as 'auntie' by the Bangladeshi community.[13] Uddin said, "I do not believe that I have done anything wrong or breached any House of Lords rules." She stated "I strongly deny that I have never lived there. Indeed I have stayed there regularly since buying it".[14][12]

Uddin has claimed her main home has been outside of London since 2001, earning an extra £83,000 as a result. Despite repeated questioning she has refused to states the location and details of her main home between 2001-2005 for which expenses were also claimed. She also has one of the highest claims for overnight subsistence of any member of the Lords.[15]

Geert Wilders Progress Report

According to 'Gates of Vienna', (whom I must also thank for the brilliant banner above), Geert Wilders is to appeal his prosecution to the Supreme Court of the Netherlands. My favourite quote is:

"Moszkowicz [Wilders' lawyer] will appeal to the Prosecutor General to “nullify the case due to considerations of the law”, which will put the order to prosecute Wilders in the garbage bin."

Um, yeah. Just a few little considerations of the law, like the fact it's an aberration which goes against everything that free Western democracies stand for. Like the fact that if Imams and ordinary Muslims can spew forth their more demented ideas, then Wilders too is free to say what he wants. After all, it's not as if some animals are more equal than others, is it?

I doubt the solicitor will phrase it quite like that, but then that's why I'll never make a lawyer or a diplomat.

The last time I checked on the progress of the petition set up in Mr Wilders' favour, it had nearly 30,000 signatures. Again, I would respectfully urge anyone who stumbles across this post to sign it, even if you disagree with him; after all, isn't the concept of freedom of speech all about differences of opinion?

Now, on a slight variation of the same subject, according to 'Atlas Shrugs', the House of Lords here in Britain has overturned the 'victory' won by Lord Nazir Ahmed (with the implicit threat of violence) to ban* Geert Wilders from screening Fitna to a gathering of Peers of the Realm, and Geert is now free to do so.

Lord Ahmed was apparently boasting of his victory in the Pakistani press, although pending a court victory hopefully he will be sentenced for death by dangerous driving very soon; the last media reports of the case made it sound like a cut and dried guilty verdict, but as Pamela notes, the story simply vanished from the public domain. However, according to his wikipedia profile, he's been referred for sentencing on 25th February, so let's hope they throw the book at him, even if he can't be expelled from the Lords afterwards.

*The less common Islamic definition of 'ban'; i.e. get some of those notoriously sensitive young men on the streets to attack some police/embassies/insert symbol of pride or authority here.

Repeat until a weak hearted Western government bans said offensive cartoon/book/film/ancient liberty for you; then ensure no counter protest can work, with violence if necessary.