9-11, the disaster on Church Street…
YOU might have thought that when we fork out £57,000 for the Paisleys’ Ballymena Advice Centre that it would be enough – seeing as it’s three times what any other MLA claims (ker-ching!), is well above what is regarded as the market rental value (ker-ching!), is paid to a company run by a DUP councillor (ker-ching!) and means you and I are effectively funding the creation a DUP asset (ker-CHING!).
But no, apparently not.
It turns out that the party’s North Antrim association ALSO donated another £25,000 to the office at 9-11 Church Street, for its refurbishment. Which is odd, because the abnormally high rental costs were justified on the basis of the refurbishment costs incurred by the landlord. So unless Iris Robinson was the interior design consultant, it all begs the question – if the generous party donation was to offset the cost of fitting the place out, why are the Paisleys still demanding so much from the taxpayer? It’s not as if there’s a recession on or anything.
Good advice doesn’t come cheap, but should it really come this expensive?
Expenses ha ha. It pays to be brazen. This is the price the electorate pays for pretending not to fund political parties. It also suits the bankers currently looting the public exchequer to have MPs investing their energies cooking their own books instead of regulating theirs.
Some of our family dynasties in politics here would put a Rio favela drug lord to shame in their(lack of)morality and brazen extortion methods.
The DUP especially operate on the premise that the electorate are complete mugs and will vote them in on the basis of a few medieval platitudes. Well it worked for the televangelists in America, where I suspect they get their ideas from..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bakker
One born every minute.
Wow! Not what I was expecting at all when I clicked on the link in Twitter.
Church Street was pretty much the address for the World Trade Center in NY, so when I saw “9-11, the disaster on Church Street…” I just assumed this would be about …
BG,
this looks tricky – in fact it looks illegal.
By the way, I was shocked that SF didnt take a battering here on Slugger over their £2 million Stormo expenses bill – which was 4 times higher than the next nearest claimant, the UUP, it looked right up Pete B’s street and would presumably have led him neatly to give birth to another few spin off threads about why Grizzly should retire.
Even my goodself, not known for being too critical of the former insurgents, was pondering how they managed to pull that one off?
Seemingly yet another scam. Will the law take a look, i mean is it petty enough to come under Legg’s jurisdiction?
They have obviously ever watched “Changing Rooms”.
Would have loved to see what Lawrence and £500 would have done.
“No, No NOT the orange”
(Lawrence and a King Billy resemblance?)
“DUP Advice Center”… sounds like the premise for a wacky TV sitcom.
It simply underlines the fact that the Paisley’s have done well for them selves over the past three decades, and it’s all built on the back of working class Unionist misery. I can’t imagine there are a whole lot of Unionists that will be over the moon at the idea of subsidising Ian Paisly Jr.’s very comfortable lifestyle, and for what? Does Unionism reckon Jr.’s worth 28.5k a year in rent alone?
The Paisley/Robinson/Dodds dynasties have certainly milked the taxpayer cash-cow. That DUP Advice centre would not be out of place in Medellin or Cali, where similar cartels profit from the ignorance and indifference of the uneducated proles.
This is a tale that will be long in the telling, I seem to remember the DUP saying they paid a £25,000 rental for use as a DUP office for meetings of their members (which it is or was used for).
I don’t know if that was annual payment or not or how all the figures work out.
The Empire is collapsing and the reign of the Paisleys in NA may be coming to an end as the antics of IPJ are a major talking point up in NA.
Wasn’t Kenneth Lea (CEO of Enron)the son of a preacher as well. Not that I’m trying to imply anything.
Great timing, BG
Sarcon 250 folder raises some questions about when the change of directors legally took place. Perhaps all will be elucidated in the grand tome. Or not, if the material doesn’t get past the legal eagles.
I think the real issue here is that the good protestant people of Ulster were sold out by Trimble and the UUP, but the DUP, the party of the people steppedn in and saved the day.
The DUP is leading for unionism and making sure unionism is winning. The Paisleys, as DUP MLAs are inherently good people, and clearly their interest in politics is truly selfless.
nevin
The company is now the Ballymena Advice Centre Ltd with a £470K mortgage.
???
The DUP saved the day, what planet are you on, the TUV have proved what many DUP voters think of that statment!
The only thing they have benefitted are their members bank statements. As a full time politician for all his life IPJ has only made money from the taxpayers, so what he has we paid for.
frustrated democrat
The fact that IPJ has sacrificed his career to spend his life in public service shows just how selfless the man is.
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