My fellow blogger PoliticalHack has been following the unfolding saga of John Hemming’s personal indiscretions, noting the rather vomit inducing spin being put on the story by journalists at one local newspaper who are known to have prior associations with our local Libidinous Democrat - great headline from the Mirror, BTW.

Today’s nausiating commentary, BTW, comes courtesy of Paul Dale of the Birmingham Post.

Paul is also the journalist to whom JH disclosed information from a confidential cabinet report, in Nov 2003, regarding the relocation of the Royal College of Organists - no pun intended - to Birmingham, which resulted in him being investigated by the Standards Board, although he escaped any sanction after they accepted his assertion that the disclosure was in the public interest.

And, of equal interest, Paul is/was also JH’s chosen ‘auditor’ of his allowance as former Deputy Leader of Birmingham City Council which on taking office he magnanimously decided to donate partially to charity, allowing him to claim that he was doing the role ‘for free’ - the rest of the money went into local Lib Dem Party coffers to cover the costs - mainly - of it’s Coventry Road offices.

Now this idea of ‘for free’ is rather interesting in the sense that;

1. It isn’t really ‘for free’ when you still claim the allowance. you might reasonably claim that you derive no personal benefit in such a situation but Council Tax payer’s money is still being paid out.

2. Isn’t the admission that part of the allowance is going into local Lib Dem party coffers equally an admission that Birmingham’s Council Tax payers have been, indirectly, funding a local political party, whether they support that party or not?

3. According to the Electoral Commissions register of political donations, JH’s registerable donations for 2004/5, the year in which he was the Council’s Deputy Leader total some £5,500 to the Lib Dem’s West Midlands office and a further £1,764 to the Birmingham Yardley & Hodge Hill accounting unit - £7,264 in total. The Deputy Leader’s allowance for last year was something of the order of £37,000, which leaves around £30,000 unaccounted for at this point in time.

Now, I think it fair comment to note here, without in anyway impugning John’s personal integrity, that £30,000 in donations to charities, if donated locally and in key areas, could hypothetically add up to a sizable amount of political patronage and influence over some community organisations and the community representatives and ‘leaders’ associated with them - and that as this money derives from council tax payers, it would seem to be a matter of public interest that the identity of any local groups in receipt of donations from these funds should be openly disclosed to local taxpayers.

In short there seems to be a moral obligation here to be a little more forthcoming in how this money has been used above and beyond the simple artifice of getting a sympathetic local journalist to look over the books.

Anyway, all this is by the by as like PoliticalHack I’m actually rather more interested in the question of why neither John, nor Bromsgrove MP Julie Kirkbride - as John himself suggested in the Sunday Mercury - thought it necessary to disclose before now that they’d been offered luxury cars by a Rover director in 2003 in return for not making quite so much fuss about corporate mismanagement within Rover? I should note in the interests of accuracy that these offers were declined by both parties.

And, even more to point, why this was disclosed first to the Sunday Mercury - other than for the obvious reason of keeping his personal life off the front page - when both had ample opportunity to raise this particular issue under protection of Parliamentary privilege in a debate which took place a mere three days earlier.

Oh, the other reason for posting was to note Pendennis’ far more realistic appraisal of John from the Guardian over the weekend, which reads:

“Poor John Hemming, the hitherto obscure rookie Liberal Democrat MP who has the weight of the world on his shoulders now it has been revealed his mistress is pregnant. The pressure was showing last week when Hemming attended a lunch where he consumed an impressive amount of wine. When asked why he was so thirsty, Hemming, married with children, explained his misfortune and his fears the press would soon find out. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen an MP set out so energetically to sabotage his political career in one fell swoop, and only a month after his arrival in Parliament,’ said one who attended the same lunch, hosted by that well-known guardian of secrets, Private Eye.”

From which one might observe John’s apparent political naivety in failing to realise that if one must keep secrets, the last thing you do is get pissed at a lunch laid on by Private Eye.

Still in deference to his liking for jazz one might offer John a few words from an old spiritual which has been recorded by, amongst others, both Satchmo and Magic Sam…

“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Nobody knows but Jesus
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Glory Hallelujah”