Money for Old Rope
Last weekend the papers reported that Lord Peter Mandelson - receives £103,465 a year as a three year 'transitional allowance' - despite having left his job as a European Commissioner in October 2008.
As ever, the long suffering public purse - is picking up the tab.
The payment of £8,622 (€10,139) a month is set at 50 per cent of his former salary of over £205,000 a year - while acting as Europe's trade commissioner.
Now just like the MPs' expenses scandal - the payment of this transitional allowance is not breaking any rules.
No doubt because the people benefiting from the rules - are the ones making them up in the first place.
What it shows is that rules made in Brussels - can be every bit as crazy as rules made in Westminster - which allowed MPs to claim for floating duck ponds, dogfood and top of the range plasma TVs.
A Brussels spokesman said: "The aim of this system is to ease their return to the labour market, to maintain their independence after their time as commissioner. We want to help them so they don't have to jump on every job offer on the way."
Yet, of course, soon after leaving his Euro job - Lord Mandelson was invited by Gordon Brown to join the last Labour government - on a generous ministerial salary.
Unbelievably, the allowance is only stopped if Lord Mandelson gets a new job - at a salary grade above his former Brussels rate of over £205,000 a year - otherwise he is entitled to claim it until 2011.
I'm very pro-European as a rule - but this behaviour is an insult to common sense - and is manna from heaven to the xenophobes and nutters - in the UK Independence Party.
Lord Mandelson doesn't need the money - he's just sold his memoirs for hundreds of thousands of pounds - he should do the decent thing and spare the tax payer and the Labour Party further embarassment.
As ever, the long suffering public purse - is picking up the tab.
The payment of £8,622 (€10,139) a month is set at 50 per cent of his former salary of over £205,000 a year - while acting as Europe's trade commissioner.
Now just like the MPs' expenses scandal - the payment of this transitional allowance is not breaking any rules.
No doubt because the people benefiting from the rules - are the ones making them up in the first place.
What it shows is that rules made in Brussels - can be every bit as crazy as rules made in Westminster - which allowed MPs to claim for floating duck ponds, dogfood and top of the range plasma TVs.
A Brussels spokesman said: "The aim of this system is to ease their return to the labour market, to maintain their independence after their time as commissioner. We want to help them so they don't have to jump on every job offer on the way."
Yet, of course, soon after leaving his Euro job - Lord Mandelson was invited by Gordon Brown to join the last Labour government - on a generous ministerial salary.
Unbelievably, the allowance is only stopped if Lord Mandelson gets a new job - at a salary grade above his former Brussels rate of over £205,000 a year - otherwise he is entitled to claim it until 2011.
I'm very pro-European as a rule - but this behaviour is an insult to common sense - and is manna from heaven to the xenophobes and nutters - in the UK Independence Party.
Lord Mandelson doesn't need the money - he's just sold his memoirs for hundreds of thousands of pounds - he should do the decent thing and spare the tax payer and the Labour Party further embarassment.
