UKIP’s sole Member of Parliament, Bob Spink, has been exposed as a parliamentary expenses trough feeder like all other parties’ MPs, with an impressive expenses claim of £140,987 over and above his ordinary salary.
Mr Spink, the living embodiment of the “corrupt Conservatives in camouflage” UKIP, joined that party after defecting from the Tories.
Mr Spink, who is still listed on the UKIP website as an “enthusiastic member and supporter of UKIP,” last year took home a delightful £23,083 in housing allowances, £13,356 in office allowances, £82,472 in staffing allowances (nearly one of the largest such “staffing” expenses of all MPs, making one wonder what huge staff this single MP employs), £1,005 on “central stationery,” £4,845 on IT provision, £1,148 on staff cover and £9,017 on travel (he obviously travels a lot).
The previous year, Mr Spink put in an even more impressive claim of in excess of £152,000, meaning that in two years he has claimed nearly a third of a million pounds from the taxpayers over his MP’s salary.
His latest £140,987 claim makes him one of the nation’s top trough feeders, a mere £9,000 below the expenses claim of the leader of the opposition, David Cameron. UKIP’s Mr Spink must be an important man.
UKIP leader Nigel Farage and his fellow MEPs have set the standard, however. They have consistently refused to publish their European parliamentary expenses, an act of extreme hypocrisy given the fact that their party makes much of the failure of the European Union to sign off its annual accounts.
There are also many simmering scandals within UKIP. Numerous questions hover over that party’s Ashford Call Centre, where 90 percent of supporters’ funds disappeared into a black hole.
Worse, there remain the pressing questions in relation to Mr Farage’s own South East region, where hundreds of thousands of pounds — the bulk of its turnover — disappeared in what was mysteriously ascribed to “other costs” between 2004 and 2005.
