Clive Betts: Sleazocrat & Porkocrat

Clive Betts MP and a couple of his Porkocrat Chums

Is Clive Betts (see this in the Times) the suino di tutti suini, the Porker of All Porkers? Maybe, maybe not, as Jonathan Djanogly seems to be making a play for the Title. Readers will have their own candidates for which MP is the biggest porker of them all but there is something particularly 'Animal Farm' about Mr. Betts.

The Times' piece on Betts is a reminder of one of those things which so many dislike about Socialists and about Labour MPs. They are very keen on distributing wealth provided it is other people's wealth, whilst at the same time amassing their own property portfolios. Betts, Hoon and a legion of others have been assiduous about playing the system and enriching themselves at the Taxpayer's expense.

Plenty of Tories and a few Lib 'Dems' have done much the same. One expects Tories to be keen on wealth and its creation, even if the circumstances are of dubious morality though strict legality.

Labour, however, has always had a down, publicly at any rate, on wealth and wealth creation, seeing wealth and the wealthy merely as a milch cow to enable money be transferred over to the non-productive element of society who are thus made Labour's clients and core vote.

So angered has been the electorate by the simple facts of what has been going on that the politics of the expenses scandal has got lost in the noise. What it has revealed is the vast hypocrisy amongst labour MPs when it comes to their own wealth creation. Here, for example, is Betts on housing and the economic climate:

The economic situation is the worst since 1997. We have the twin impact of the credit squeeze and rising mortgage rates which are helping to slow down the economy, while at the same time rising prices of food, gas an fuel are reducing real disposable income and creating real inflationary pressures.

The Bank of England would like to reduce interest rates to counteract an economic slow down, but that will not be possible while inflation is in excess of 3 percent.

2 further related problems are falling house prices and demand for wage increases. House price falls in most cases will have no effect on individuals, but if people have borrowed more than the house is now with and then have problems in paying negative equity can become a real problem. Many people have also been using rising house prices to enable them to re-mortgage and provide credit for other purchases and if this is not now possible consumer demand could be hit.

No mention of his own susbstantial interest in the property market there, you may think. He pontificates on the problems of the mass of us in our housing needs yet has been resolutely milking the Taxpayer to pay for his own housing needs. He has not had to worry too much about where the money for his own enrichment comes from for a long time. He has been at the forefront of the protection of MPs perks and now we understand why: in particular we understand why he was a supporter of David Maclean's odious and notorious bill to exempt MPs expenses from public scrutiny. here, you may think, was an odious hypocrite using a Parliamentary Bill to advance his own protection from scrutiny by the Taxpayer. What a prime example of personal corruption that is and what a sleazy porkocrat Mr. Betts is!


He sits for an industrial seat in Sheffield, one of Labour's safest. His electorate is one of those which might reasonably be called 'deprived'. Yet what has Labour ever done for them, save keep them in thrall by an enormous system of demeaning hand-outs that discourages all of them from the sort of wealth-creation that Mr. Betts so evidently espouses?

He is a contemptible hypocrite who by rights the electorate ought to turf out at the first opportunity. Sadly, unless there is a move to deselect him, he will be back in the next Parliament, though almost certainly no longer lording it over us. The voters of Sheffield South East (as it will be at the next election) deserve better but have only themselves to blame if they vote this Porker back into office once more.

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