(Two faced: many bought masks to hide their shame.)Memory Minister Gandolph Standish has defended his decision to acquire a £20 000 pea and charge it to the taxpayer.
Standish, who was appointed head of the prestigious Ministry of Thoughts and Memories last year, bought the Tesco shelled garden pea from farmers after spotting it on a grass verge, but only recollected the leguminous bargain yesterday when a high court judge accidentally published details of MPs expenses, having mistaken them for the distances in inches to nearby stars.
He wasn’t the only Member of Parliament under scrutiny today.
Education Minister Bestine Sloppur’s bills include a ten-metre-tall jelly in the shape of the pope and 3 000 left-footed clogs.
Chancellor Mannie Vane came close to his maximum with £800 000 for a jasmine-scented shotgun, a purchase which one industry insider called “a bastard of a buy.”
Enid Dudding, the Works and Pensions Secretary, blew £80 on a dandelion.
Serendipity Secretary Dulcie Fnast spent £18 000 on an extended taxi-ride that took her round and round one small field for the better part of a day, plus £50 on dramamine. A tearful Fnast apologised later to onlookers, saying, “I didn’t know what else to get.”
Science Minister Mittenglove Clitheroe stands accused of “wanton rocketry” after it emerged that he charged taxpayers to secretly put a giraffe into orbit. According to NASA, it is still there, cluttering up the space-lanes, and can next be seen from your own backyard on Sunday April the 6th, rising in the northwest at 21:43 and gliding by the brilliant yellow Capella, before vanishing into the Earth’s shadow some six minutes later, just past Mars, in the constellation of Gemini. High resolution telescopes reveal spectacular views of the ungulate’s mournful visage at portholes.
Ailleron Trochanter, MP for Leicesterchester, is facing a lion’s mane of criticism for equipping local swimming baths with poisonous Cnidaria.
Tom Larvae, the Shadow Minister of Hours and Passing Moments, bought a “totally impractical” clock with a myriad of microscopic hands for half a grand, which constituents say he never uses anyway, and has had to sellotape a free wristwatch over the face of, just to tell the time.
Paul Cannon, MP for Haslet Heath, spent £600 000 of taxpayer’s money in a dream! Bills record a series of increasingly bizarre purchases over the course of one night last August, culminating in “a sort of hard man’s shoes called dayjobs,” which he wore proudly while assuring his wife that “if stick-to-braw means kingso, then you’re beef, old man.”
Other items include:
* The embalmed brain of Albert Einstein, encrusted with rubies and emeralds: £110 000 (Ahabella Wildern, MP for Spume).
* The bottled breath of John Lennon whispering the nonsense word “dilstilsdabum” in 1968: £750 000 (Varicella Wood, MP for Molesby West).
* One owl’s testicle, a tachyon and a CD of constituents’ screams recorded on location in local hospitals: £35 (Rogella McQuarrie, MP for Truro).
* A ghost’s teeth: tenner (Jack Plank, MP for Slockening).
* Anti-ghost sweatband: £11.50 (Jack Plane, MP for Slackening).
* 15 “retirements”: priceless (Michael Eft, Children’s Minister).
Taxpayers also footed the £23 000 bill for Treasury Secretary Marcus Dudding’s 365 scarecrows, and the quarter of a million an agency was paid to devise names, logos, online avatars and personal moe anthropomorphisms for each of them.
There is no suggestion that Mr. Standish or any of his colleagues did anything illegal though.
“It’s not unusual, compared to what others in a similar income bracket are claiming,” the embattled MP remonstrated. “The real criminals are anyone who thinks different. I loved that pea like my own brother. Now, where did I put it?”
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