I'd like to apologise, completely and wholeheartedly, for expenses squandered during the development of this blog.
These sums were spent purely for research purposes, you understand, and at no time did I claim back money contrary to agreed legislation. However, it is entirely possible that some of these payments came indirectly from the public purse, or from the generous pockets of others. I realise now that financial behaviour of this kind is indefensible. I claimed it all under the best of intentions, but only in retrospect do I realise that everybody despises me for being a greedy trough-snouter. I therefore promise to pay back everything that I spent, and to wear a hairshirt until further notice. Please do not hate me.
Here are those dodgy expense claims in full.
Oystercard annual season (Zones 1-3) £1136 I wouldn't be able to slag off the tube, or praise it to high heaven, if I didn't travel on it. This annual outlay is therefore entirely unjustified, and I shall walk everywhere from now on.
1 pair yellow socks (1984 vintage) 99p As a student little did I realise, when I bought this semi-luminous footwear, that it would raise a cheap laugh in a blog about Camden Town 25 years later. Unfortunately the Oxford branch of C&A has since closed down, so I shall instead donate my 99p to a charity for redundant shopfloor workers.
Entrance fee to a museum starting with the letter J £3 Whose ridiculous idea was it to visit a London museum starting with every letter of the alphabet? Ah, mine. My sequential trawl has so far cost me more than £30, when there was actually no need whatsoever to visit any of them. Such a waste.
1 pair nice trainers (blue/grey) £84.99 I can't believe I forked out that amount for a pair of plastic shoes, but I was entranced because they looked nice. And I really needed some new trainers when the old pair I've had since 2002 finally wore out. It's all the walking around the capital I do, so blame the blog. And if the new pair lasts as long, the offensive price tag will only work out at a pound a month.
Birthday meal at the OXO Tower amount unknown (but undoubtedly huge) I'm sure that BestMate truly meant for me to enjoy my night out at this swanky exclusive rooftop restaurant. But I repaid him by treating the entire evening as a journalistic opportunity, and spent far more time writing up my experience than I had on eating the Oxo's delicacies in the first place. Pah, I didn't even contribute to the tip. I must take him out for a meal immediately, and probably to somewhere better than the Bow Flyover McDonalds drive-thru.
1 copy of the Daily Telegraph 90p I wonder why expense-busting journos haven't got round to my MP yet. It's either because he's played the expenses system without bending the rules even once, or because they're saving him up for a future exposé. Here's hoping it's the latter, because then I can buy a copy of the Daily Telegraph and frame it.
1 bath plug (black) 88p The Home Secretary was blasted for not paying for her bath plug, and I haven't paid for mine either, because my landlord did. Unforgivable, sorry. Thank goodness I don't have a moat to clean, or a tennis court to dig up, or some second home wisteria to remove.
In conclusion, I accept that these collective financial transgressions debar me from any future public office. I was only following the rules, honest I was, but I should have realised that following the rules wasn't good enough. Any hopes I might ever have had of standing for Parliament are shot to pieces, and rightly so. The media's persistent moral witch-hunt has ensured that the British public will now only ever vote for an MP with a squeaky clean background, and that the ethically bankrupt need not apply. Perfect behaviour is required - not a skeleton in the closet, nor even a packet of post-its nicked from the office stationery cupboard umpteen years ago. Let's hope that the nation can find 650 self-supporting angels to vote for at the next election, somewhere.
