27 September 2013

Labour peer attacks Labour council for saving money

In a bizarre twist in the saga of Hearts bankruptcy, Labour peer, George Foulkes, has criticised Edinburgh Council for selling former school buildings which Hearts had been using part of as a car park. The site had been costing the council £80,000 a year to maintain and Hearts paid a nominal sum for its use on matchdays.

Foulkes told the Edinburgh Evening News "It really is very strange the council should take this attitude. Fans will be disappointed and annoyed" and called on the council to "bend over backwards"to help the club - presumably by continuing to subsidise the club, not selling off redundant property and making service cuts elsewhere.

Foulkes however is no stranger to extravagent spending - in 2008 he claimed £45,000 parliamentary expenses for a flat he inherited and a whopping £54,000 expenses from the House of Lords in a single year.  Known to like a refreshment, Foulkes was convicted of being drunk and disorderly in 1993 after a scotch whisky reception in the Commons.  After he knocked over a pensioner (who happened to be then Lib Dem MP, David Rendel's mum) he was apprehended by a passing rozzer to whom Foulkes took violent exception.

Just for the record - and in case Foulkes has forgotten - Hearts owe the City of Edinburgh Council more than £93,000 in unpaid rates and charges (presumably including unpaid rent for the car park) and the government, in the form of HMRC, more than £1.8 million in unpaid tax. 

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