The ‘Poor Laws’ movement.
The Pink Tafia is still rustling its skirts, spitting and snarling in spirited defence of David Laws. There is a gaping hole at the rear of their argument. One that is being completely ignored by the Pinkeratti.
It is simply this.
Claiming a Second Home Allowance is not obligatory. It is not thrust upon you. Your Mother doesn’t turn you into a Claimer. It is a lifestyle choice.
I am well aware that any notion of choice is anathema to those who promote the ‘uman Rights of the Gay lobby. Their agenda is predicated upon the belief that they have no choice.
Unfortunately, their entire argument, and the yards of simpering nonsense that have been printed in defence of Laws and his rent-boyfriend arrangement is predicated on the unspoken assumption that he had no choice as to whether to claim that £40,000 or not.
He did.
As does every other benefit claimant when they start a new relationship. Do I tell the Housing Benefit Office that I am no longer entitled to claim Housing Benefit or do I keep quiet about my love life and keep the money?
David Laws was a benefit claimant. Nothing more glamorous than that. We work to provide the benefit.
He lied about his circumstances and entitlement to that benefit.
Nothing has shocked me more this past week than Iain Dale’s statement:
“Are we really insisting that if all our politicians aren’t whiter than white, they should quit? It’s a very strange logic”
I have had a certain grudging respect for Iain Dale up until now. I find it hard to believe that he should be promoting the idea that it is impossible to find 646 or 650 men or women out of our 60 million population that have irreproachable morals and that therefore we should give up and accept the odd tea leaf here and there in our political brew.
Iain has done a great deal for politics, particularly on-line politics. I hope to hear in the near future that he admits to being overwrought at finding a fellow gay so pilloried in the press and it caused him to pen those lines. I hope he takes them back. I really do.
The Gay lobby is a powerful one; it has done much to right the injustices that befell the homosexuals in our community. We should never forget that they are also a powerful political lobby that is not averse to hanging their political hat on any convenient hook.
There was an international outcry in response to the jailing of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga (now pardoned and released). The Gay lobby pressed for International Aid to be stopped to Malawi until this blatant ‘homophobia’ was stopped. When the President pardoned the couple and they were released from prison, it was claimed as a victory for the ‘gay’ lobby.
Was it?
It seems that all is not so simple. Tiwonge Chimbalanga is believed to be a transgender or intersex individual. She has lived as a woman all her life. She dressed as a woman, and was employed as a woman. In the United Kingdom she would probably have been allowed to amend her birth certificate.
We are not privy to the reasons why it was decided to pardon this couple – along with a statement that homosexuality is still illegal in Malawi.
It may well be that medical evidence was produced. A lot of the evidence produced to prove that this was an example of ‘homosexuality’ rested on Flony Frank who, whilst employing Tiwonge as a woman had forced her to undress one day:
She then told the court that she discovered male genitals though they did not look normal to her.
Tiwonge claims to menstruate every month:
“I have male genitals, but inside I am a complete woman. Maybe I cannot give birth to a child, but I menstruate every month — or most months — and I can do any household chores a woman can do.”
Peter Tatchell has been taken to task over this issue and his paper thin excuse was that ‘he did not have Tiwonge’s permission’ to describe her as transgender, nor ‘official confirmation’ that she was – from government officials in a country which does not recognise the condition! Neither of these factors stopped him from making his emotional plea that this was a case of blatant homophobia which should be punished by stopping all aid to Malawi……
The story is not as simple as the political activists would have us believe and the erasing of this story’s intersex, transgender, and/or transsexual history says a lot about the gay community and its media.
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June 2, 2010 at 09:37 -
http://cyberboris.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/religion-can-tear-your-soul-in-two/
Maybe it would be fairer to wait until the Standards Committee has come to a decision on Mr. Laws before jumping to conclusions, in what is obviously a sensitive situation.
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June 2, 2010 at 10:29 -
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June 2, 2010 at 10:31 -
“The Gay lobby is a powerful one; it has done much to right the injustices that befell the homosexuals in our community. “
Like most pressure groups set up to combat genuine injustice, they’ve grown too big and now need to find reasons to sustain not just their current existence, but future growth.
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June 2, 2010 at 10:45 -
100% agree.
In April I was in a long conversation on politics with one of Dorothy’s friends. He was a staunch Labour Party supporter, but conceded how bad they had been………..however, he stated that he still intended to vote for them because, “They are the only party who have ever done anything for gays”.
In the year 2010 with equality issues policed with the enthusiasm of a drunk at a beer festival, I wondered out loud whether or not it was high time that homosexuals viewed themselves as British citizens first and foremost and vote in the national interest.
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5
June 2, 2010 at 10:39 -
I agree. I too found Iain Dale’s wittering sources of both surprise and amusement. Likewise Mathew Parris’s piece.
The only people who were making David Laws’s downfall a ‘homosexual issue’ were homosexuals. As a result, I have gone right off Dale, and will absent myself from his blog until he retracts – as you suggest.
David Laws should be under police investigation for ‘obtaining property by deception’. It really is that clear-cut.
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June 2, 2010 at 10:46 -
It isn’t just gay people who think what the Telegraph has done to David Laws is appalling. Nick Clegg came out (joke) this morning to say that what the Telegraph has done to David Laws is very cruel.
I sent you my blog about the pain that belonging to a very religious family can cause because that is obviously a big part of the situation. That is something I know a lot about, because it happened to a close friend.
I understand that you both have no patience with the views I am putting forward to you and that is your right. It is because I believe that this is totally NOT clear cut that I am putting some other explanations forward. We are at opposite ends of the spectrum of understanding here and the point of blogging/tweeting is to see other sides of situations.
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June 2, 2010 at 10:55 -
Anna, I didn’t send you that comment to tell you off or be a nanny figure, i would have no right to do that.
Many people don’t understand about the pain caused by devout religious families, how could they, if they haven’t come up against it? Nor can we know what gay people suffer, and I am sure it is absolutely no picnic in this day and age, when so many are harshly critical and judgmental. I was just trying to make the point that things are often not as black and white as they appear to be.
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June 2, 2010 at 10:55 -
Mr. Laws is an expense thief. Simple.
Even ignoring the rent claims, there’s the dramatic drop in his claims for maintenance when he had to produce receipts.
The question is, why when he’s a multi-millionaire did he think he should do this? Is it like the “advice” given to all Lib Dums to steal taxpayers’ money to transfer over to the Party?
Then they play all sanctimonious – hypocrites the lot of them.
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9
June 2, 2010 at 11:04 -
@angelneptunestar.
I don’t really care what ‘gay’ people suffer. Their suffering ,if indeed it is such, is entirely of their own choosing. No one forces them to do what they do. They do it because they like it: in much the same way that I happen to like heterosexual sex. So please don’t come out with the ’suffering’ claptrap.As to Laws, he is a thief…pure and simple.
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June 2, 2010 at 11:46 -
Not much point continuing this. Totally don’t agree with you, not many people would nowadays.
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June 2, 2010 at 12:10 -
I do.
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June 2, 2010 at 12:12 -
@angelneptunestar.
More people agree with my point of view than agree with yours. That’s for sure! We’re just the silent majority!
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June 2, 2010 at 12:15 -
Well said Poacher.
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June 2, 2010 at 12:18 -
Iain Dale’s argument, once again founded on the ‘gayist’ agenda, was also one too many for me. The ultimate sanction has been imposed – he’s been de-bookmarked !
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June 2, 2010 at 12:36 -
I am really not sure what is going on here, especially in Malawi. It all sounds very odd to me. I mean, are they homosexuals or not? If not, what were they doing in Court? Did no one bother to check? And why did this “Woman” not bother to mention it before?
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16
June 2, 2010 at 14:24 -
To untangle the gay/money parts to this I took some articles and just deleted the lines/words about Laws’ sexuality. When I read what was left he was still a fraudster. So new piggy, same old trough.
Fine by me, sack the man, call the police.
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June 2, 2010 at 15:01 -
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/178608/David-Laws-is-a-victim-of-an-utterly-stupid-rule
May I refer you to an interesting article by Ann Widdecombe?
In today’s Times, there is a great leader, Private Life, Public Good. Can’t find a link, but it is today’s Times.
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June 2, 2010 at 16:04 -
I can’t help but think that being a homosexual and being a benefits thief are orthogonal, except perhaps in poor Mr Laws mind, where being outed as a benefits thief was preferable to being outed as a homosexual.
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June 2, 2010 at 19:35 -
I find the argument strange that a rich man stealing is somehow worse than someone of lesser means stealing. Like it’s alright to steal if you are poor. The “victim” is stolen from just the same, whatever the means of the thief. Sort of closet Communism: “I wasn’t stealing, I was redistributing wealth, umm , in my favour. Sort of reducing income inequalities you might say”No, theft is theft.
Laws probably owes his wealth to a sharp eye on how to gain the best advantage from any situation and no doubt saw the rent-wheeze as just yet another opportunity to make money. Its what bankers do, isn’t it?
I don’t have aproblem with him being rich, nor him being a poof. But spare me the victim squeals. He is entitled to living costs away from his constituency home. He turned that to his own advantage rather than pay the same in rent to strangers.
The idea he “stole £40,000″ doesn’t wash against the cost of “open market” accommodation for him being little different. Yes he pocketed £40,000 via rent to his lover, but we are not £40,000 poorer. There is no victim.
He seems to me a rather good banker. Sort of person we need to pull the same sort of tricks to the favour of Great Britain. I suspect without someone like him at the helm, we will all be much poorer. Small consolation that MP expenses will in future be beyond reproach.
The only reason to sack a man is if he is no good at his job. This as yet renains “not proven”
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June 2, 2010 at 20:17 -
Mr Dale majored on the irrelevant ‘gay’ theme, when the Laws issue is simply about another Expenses-Fiddling MP.
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June 2, 2010 at 23:14 -
Whilst I can’t condone what Laws did I can understand it. Although society has generally accepted homosexuality that doesn’t mean that families and religious institutions will accept those who ‘come out’. I have experience of the former and I am friends with others who struggle with either or both of those.
However as AndrewSouthLondon points out, expenses such as living away from home whilst on business are claimed every year by thousands if not millions of people in this country – on production of a receipt. If Laws had been open about his relationship then he could potentially have claimed a lot more money without a problem.
His mistake then not that he did it but how he did it. And the question – as Guido pointed out the other day – is who leaked the arrangement to the Telegraph. I think these days we can safely rule out a member of the press doing their own research.
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June 2, 2010 at 23:20 -
As for the other part of the piece, the Gay and T* communities are uneasy bed fellows (no pun intended), with numbers of both sides not really liking being associated with the other. It was a marriage of convenience because the T* side didn’t – and still doesn’t – have the profile of the Gay side even though it was Drag Queens that kicked off the Stonewall riots. I can’t however see the link being broken any time soon.
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