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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To have distinct feelings of hatred towards that MP on telly in Hull atm

73 replies

Alambil · 08/02/2010 21:08

the one who had to have his own council flat instead of staying with someone in a flat like all the others...

bemoaning that he can't live on JSA for a week because it's not enough

No shit, sherlock - but WE have to (well, not me personally) so why can't YOU, you wally.

OP posts:

Trickle · 08/02/2010 22:43

Ooo - havn't caught the second programme yet - but I used to work on Orchard Park! And I thought it was called a Wiggly Worm but so did DH - we got together at Spiders - 10 years ago! .

Austin Mitchel has to be coming across as a dinosaur though - he is appaulling, but it probably won't effect him too badly as I believe he has a very safe seat.

lockets · 08/02/2010 22:50

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

sheepgomeep · 08/02/2010 22:52

yes thought Mark Oaten was a hypocrite too. It annoys me that he got on his high horse about her spending part of her benefits on fags when he was quite happily claiming for those irons and god knows what else courtesy of the tax payer.

Love the way he tried to justify it 'I bought the cheapest iron' lol lol ffs

sheepgomeep · 08/02/2010 22:53

yes it is poor lockets.. I just got annoyed at the hypocrisy of it all

MavisEnderby · 08/02/2010 22:54

Thousand splendid suns,I am pmsl at "no one does that much ironing and I have 11 kids"

In fact,bugger me,you have 11 kids!REspect!!!

Ponders as when on course at uni had colleague doing course who had her 11th child in the middle ofit.It isn't you is it???

lockets · 08/02/2010 22:57

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

thousandsplendidsuns · 08/02/2010 22:58

'Mildly took the piss out of a lax expenses system'??? That's all right then. Just like he 'mildly took the piss' out of his marriage vows by shagging a rent boy?! I find it hard to stomach any of these MPs handing out good advice to people who have virtually nothing and probably smoke / drink / take drugs to make life feel slightly better for at least some of the time. Who knows - with the benefit of a good education they too could have been the proud owner of four irons and a lovely house in the country. Obviously wasn't enough for Mark O though, which makes his remarks somewhat disingenous. let's face it - none of them can hack it!

sheepgomeep · 08/02/2010 23:01

I was a bit puzzled that they didn't smoke baccy. It's a lot cheaper than buying fags

mateykatie · 08/02/2010 23:05

thousandsplendidsuns,

I agree it is bad - all I said is that you have to put it in some perspective.

The rent boy stuff is another matter - it was appalling, but as far as I can tell, doesn't affect his work as a MP.

gaelicsheep · 08/02/2010 23:07

Oh I wish I'd seen this, but then again maybe not. I love Hull. I used to live just down the road from Orchard Park and we never had any trouble at all. I even left my purse on the grass outside our house all night (by accident clearly) and it was still there in the morning. We had more problems with vandalism to our car in a quiet N Yorks village than we ever did in Hull, which is supposed to be the car crime capital of the UK isn't it?

OK we did move out to a Wolds village in the end, but as cities go Hull is great. As someone else said it has a very rich history and the people are really lovely and genuine. People who diss Hull have generally never been there.

mateykatie · 08/02/2010 23:11

gaelicsheep,

You should be able to watch it again on www.channel4.com/programmes/tower-block-of-commons/4od soon. They only seem to have last week's episode up at the moment though.

gaelicsheep · 08/02/2010 23:16

Thanks but I can't use any of those iplayer type things on my crappy 0.5MB (£25 a month!) satellite connection.

thousandsplendidsuns · 08/02/2010 23:18

Well, in my view, it demonstrates his eseential dishonesty (claiming it was a set up by the News of the World). Why not just own up and say he's sorry? (And get on and do a bit of ironing to show what good use he's made of is ill-gotten gains?) (Or is that secretly why he hired the rent boy - to press all his military creases?!)

mateykatie · 08/02/2010 23:27

thousandsplendidsuns,

It is quite weird when you think about it, a lot of MPs seem to do far more ironing than is healthy.

Chris Huhne, another Lib Dem, even claimed £119 for a trouser press!

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/8047219.stm

mateykatie · 08/02/2010 23:34

Googling the Telegraph site for ironing expenses comes up with

Ann Winterton (Tory) £94 for iron/board

Goerge Mudie (Labour) £32.99 ironing board

Peter Luff (Tory) £49.99 + £14.99 for 2 ironing boards

Mike Hall (Labour) £110 a month on dry cleaning and ironing

John Reid (Labour) unspecified amount on ironing equipment

This is just the first few that Google threw up!

whizzpop · 08/02/2010 23:47

I'm enjoying the series:
Austin is 75, I don't blame him for not wanting to sleep on a sofa/play the game. His stupid singing annoys me, but I think he's just right to say "I'll do the programme on these terms" - it's up to the producers to decide if that's enough. He comes across as having his heart and politics in the right place but maybe he's a bit out of touch after so many years in westminster?
No one is going to look good spending £40 of a limited budget on fags - it's taking money directly away from your own children - week in, week out.
You buy an iron to furnish a flat once - it's not that big a deal. Lots of politicians abused the system in a really appalling way, but I get the impression that Oaten isn't one of them.
The tory bloke actually comes across quite well, but the tory woman is awful - even if she hadn't been rumbled with the £50, did she really think bearing gifts at the end would make her look good - I mean if she'd set the money aside before the relationship was even established she was clearly planning to do it to make herself look caring and generous- very cynical!

MavisEnderby · 08/02/2010 23:53

Yeah,but if he is meant to stay in a council flat with the family then he bloody well should,and not go swanning round to his rich mates for tea.

re irons.You can get them for a fiver in tescos.No need to spend a hundred plus quid.

I think AM came across as truly dreadful.No compassion.Having seen/heard him on other progs i expected a bit more compassion.It wasn't there.

whizzpop · 09/02/2010 00:17

It's a TV programme - nothing more, nothing less. It's not "real". It's entertainment. They're all only doing it to raise their profile. He's not completely playing the producers game and I actually think - good for him for sticking to his own terms. It is a TV Show.
Really don't care about the irons! Major fraud, yes - irons and crinkle crisps: no.

JaneS · 09/02/2010 09:31

So is the second episode available, does anyone know? (I'm useless with computer stuff).

Is it me, or is Austin taking the piss? All that calling 'Seh-li-nah' in the first one - what an idiot. I just saw the clip of the woman buying her fags - I get that she shouldn't be spending her money on them, but if she's the same woman Mark Oaten was with last week, she seemed pretty depressed - the way she was just sitting around and so on, she seemed like a basically outgoing person who was too ground down by it all.

AccioPinotGrigio · 09/02/2010 10:46

Austin Mitchell is a fossil. His wife is beyond belief. She was staggered that "these people" had intelligent views on political issues and her greatest sadness about the whole thing appears to be the fact that these views "don't translate into votes". Would you vote for people who have no understanding of, or interest in your life and take the view that living on a council estate like The Orchard is not that bad.

Austin Mitchell is clearly too out of touch for this MP gig. He seems tired and confused and disinterested. I was also shocked at his sexist attitudes about women. We need our politicians to have a 21st century mentality.

wishingchair · 09/02/2010 10:50

I'm from Hull originally too (have loved the Hull nostalgia going on on this thread ... Adelphi, Spiders, Land of Green Ginger, Yankee Burger (the very best chips and burgers anywhere ever)). Wish they'd pick on some other towns ... always blinking Hull.

pandora69 · 09/02/2010 12:34

I grew up in Dunswell and went to the now-defunct St John Fisher school on Orchard Park - I thank my lucky stars I escaped! My sister worked for the council benefits dept and had to be sat behind a perspex screen to stop her being spat on. Nice. Going up to Hull to visit relatives always feels like an episod of Life on Mars - travelling back in time about 20 years! It is a weird, weird place. I do agree about Yankee Burger and it's chips though . It sounds as if I might be a bit older than you lot - Romeos and LAs were our local clubs, but not the Waterfront because I might bump into my dad!

mateykatie · 09/02/2010 15:22

littlereddragon,

You can watch it here

www.channel4.com/programmes/tower-block-of-commons/4od

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