Danczuk Gravy Train Exposed

While he keeps a low profile after cursing his preferred choice for Labour, Liz Kendall, who secured a measly 4.5% of the vote, Rochdale’s nominally Labour MP Simon Danczuk might like to have his excuses ready when the questions start, as they will with the certainty of night following day, concerning the amounts of money, both public and private, that he and now-estranged wife Karen have been trousering of late.

Lots of lovely lolly for the benefit of Themselves Personally Now

It seems the episode where he was paid a rate of £2,000 an hour by the Sun for only contributing to an article was not the only recent occasion where Danczuk has been supplementing his MP’s salary with generous payments from Labour-bashing newspapers.  As Rochdale Online put it last week, “Tory supporting Daily Mail pay Rochdale's Labour MP £1,000 per hour”. Yes, the local media is getting restive.

The rest of the article did not make good reading for him: “Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk has received another £14,000 for an articles he ‘contributed’ just fourteen hours of his time to - £1,000 an hour. The £14,000 received in August by the Labour MP was from DMGT PLC, publisher of Tory supporting newspaper, The Daily Mail”.

It got worse: “This follows the revelation last month that Mr Danczuk had been paid £10,000 for an article he ‘contributed’ just five hours of his time to - £2,000 an hour. That payment was received by the Labour MP from the Murdoch owned News Group Newspapers, publisher of another Tory supporting newspaper, The Sun”. Ouch!

There was also further mention of his expense claims: “So far in 2015, Mr Danczuk has declared earnings of £33,435 from outside interests in addition to his MP salary of £74,000. Mr Danczuk's expenses claim for the financial year 2014/15 have not yet been published - in 2013/14 he claimed a total of £206,908.92”. He claimed more than the likes of Andy Burnham, who is a member of the shadow cabinet.

On top of Danczuk putting himself in the top Income Tax bracket, there was a further revelation about his estranged wife. In an article titled “Karen Danczuk: Queen of overtime”, Rochdale Online observed “Karen Danczuk, the estranged wife of Labour MP for Rochdale, Simon Danczuk, was paid for a staggering 258.5 hours in overtime by the taxpayer between April 2013 and April 2015 whilst working for Mr Danczuk in his constituency office”. There was more.

“As well as working in Mr Danczuk's constituency office, from December 2013, Mrs Danczuk also ran Danczuk's Deli in Rochdale town centre … Until May 2015, the multi-tasking Mrs Danczuk, the self-styled Queen of the selfies (notorious for her cleavage revealing selfies on Twitter), was also a councillor and assistant portfolio holder on Rochdale Council … Mrs Danczuk is also a mother to two young children”.

How does she juggle all those balls? And how does he manage to serve all those constituents as well as “contribute” to the right-leaning press? At least he eventually got round to last week’s Rochdale bus crash. Sadly, he was a day and a half late. And got to it a day after Zelo Street. I’m sure he’ll have a suitable explanation for his voters.