Urban Art Association

Nice paste up on Jaqui Smith's house!, by notworthit on Apr 16, 2009 0:43:35 GMT 1,


To highlight the grotesque nature of MP's expenses claims, at a time when most taxpayers are finding it hard to get by, we unveiled a blue plaque on Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s South London residence to honour her services to the people.

Last July MPs (surprisingly) voted to keep their second home allowances (along with a 2.25 percent pay rise). The rules enabled the Home Secretary to claim £116,000 to furnish her ‘second’ constituency home in Redditch, which she shares with her husband (paid as his wife’s Parliamentary adviser at £40,000-a-year) and children, with barbeques and porn films. She could only do this by claiming her sister’s house in South London, where she occupies a second room, to be her first home.

Other MPs who deserve blue plaques are:

Alistair Darling who has a choice of four homes; he is provided with two grace and favour homes at the public’s expense, rents out his former private home (originally taxpayer funded) for his private profit and then he claims for his other home.

Houseing minister Margaret Beckett who was given a grace-and-favour home in 18th-century Admiralty House in late 1997 and claimed £106,000 in expenses for a second home in the six years from 2001/02 to 2006/07.

Tony McNulty, the Employment Minister, who claimed £60,000 as a second home allowance for the house in which his parents live.

It is also funny (and worrying) that the woman who reassures us how safe and secure the personal information to be stored on ID cards will be, couldn’t even stop the sordid details of her own private life from being leaked to the press.

It is also funny (and worrying) that the woman who is supposed to be responsible for the security of our country couldn’t stop a couple of reporters from fixing a blue plaque to her house at eight in the morning on Easter Monday. We found the house on Street View (there were two coppers sitting outside her door) and no one stopped us as we fiddled around outside suspiciously for about 20 minutes. We are being asked in Stasi-esque police adverts to ‘trust our instincts’ and report possible terrorist activity (i.e. call the fuzz if the towel-heads move in next door). But surely if the millions of terrorist cells here in the UK were really poised to attack then they would be doing it right now. I wonder if they’re sitting at home reading about our stunt in The Sun saying, “A thousand curses! If only we had thought to use the internet to find Jacqui Smith’s house, could have blown that filthy porn-guzzling infidel limb from limb by now!”