Sun Discovers Lords Allowances Five Years Late

Never a paper to let a scoop go to waste - or to leave it after a day when the narrative can be strung out for four or five - the Super Soaraway Currant Bun has turned its assault on the House of Lords from a targeted attack on Lord Sewel, who in any case has now left the building, to a kind of more general whinging about peers being able to claim allowances. The piss-poor Sun Nation website has the latest example of the craft today.

“MEGABUCKS MEMBERS MILK THOUSANDS FROM THE HOUSE OF LORDS JUST BY SHOWING UP … Exclusive investigation finds rich peers are coining in taxpayer cash” howls the headline on Jonathan Reilly’s article. The astonished tone continues with “Multi-millionaire peers top up their fortunes by claiming a daily House of Lords allowance - courtesy of the taxpayer”. As if allowances would come from somewhere else.

But there’s more: “A Sun investigation found several megabucks members are taking the tax-free sum of up to £300 a time just for showing up … Labour’s Lord Paul, 84, whose steel business is worth £2.2billion, appeared on 134 days last year and pocketed £40,200 … That is £14,000 more than the UK’s average wage, yet he spoke in the House just three times for a total of 14 minutes”. Get whipping up that frenzy!

Perhaps the article could get to the point? “Our findings come as today The Sun issues a challenge to peers: ‘Keep Your House In Order’ … It follows our exposé of sleazy Lord Sewel’s drugs and hookers sessions which called into question whether some of the unelected peers are pointless wasters”. Gosh, that’s well intercoursing subtle. But there is a teensy problem with this discovery - it’s five years too late.

Not only that, but the Sun is way behind the rest of the media on making this discovery. Take, for instance, the case of Lord Hanningfield, whose ability to “clock in” so he could trouser his £300 allowance hit the pages of the Mirror back in December 2013, something that was also reported by the BBC. Hanningfield observed that, in his estimation, there were around fifty other peers doing the same thing.

There was also a suitably judgmental comment piece from Kevin Maguire, where he observed “I’ve heard mutterings for years in Westminster that Baron This or Baroness That was freeloading … It’s the posh version of a factory worker clocking on then climbing over the wall to go home”. His conclusion was that “the House of Cronies is a disgrace in a modern country - a medieval anachronism ripe for abolition”.

And even he and the Mirror were late to the game, as the allowance system which some peers have been working to their advantage has been in place since October 2010. That means the press has had five years to do their investigation. It took the Mirror more than three years, and the Sun has taken nearly five. Where has our free and fearless press been all that time? Slebs. Churnalism. PR guff. Pundits. That’s where it’s been.

Then they whine about the BBC doing real news. What a complete and absolute shower.