Daily Archives: March 30, 2009

The beauty of Tollymore

We are all on a very intensive health kick at the moment; all our spare time is spent out and about doing lots of walking in the glorious parks and reserves of our local region. And if there is one thing Northern Ireland is blessed with it is endless miles of beautiful places to walk and enjoy.

Yesterday we went down to the Mournes and spent the day at Tollymore Forest Park just outside of the town of Newcastle. Pictured above is just a small part of the many miles of foresty walkways – that’s one of the stepping stones that you can cross over up and down the river.

After a picnic lunch we went for a walk and ended up covering just over five km’s and only turned back when the famous mists started to come down over the area. Looming over Tollymore are the Mourne Mountains with Slieve Donard being the highest peak. Yep, I have climbed it I am proud to say – back in 2002 – and it took me four hours, up and down. From the top you can see right over to the coast of Scotland and it felt like such an achievement to do it.

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Should Jacqui Smith resign over her husband’s grubby habit…?

We now have Porngate causing the latest outrage in the United Kingdom; the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, is in deep water – not over what her husband gets up to late at night so much – but for the fact that she has claimed what he does as an expense.

‘Mr Jacqui Smith’, aka Richard Timney, likes watching porno movies when nobody’s watching, and the trouble is Ms Smith has used her parliamentary expense account to claim the £20 back that her husband spent on his little habit.

 

So should she resign over all this…?

I don’t think resignation is called for because I reckon she is embarrassed enough about the fact that everyone now knows her husband has a penchant for those grubby movies. But she did effectively use taxpayers money to finance her husbands viewing habit. Consider this though – the public, who are fed up to the eyebrows with the reckless spending and claiming of these MP’s at a time when we cannot pay our mortgages, are learning in more detail just how much these MP’s get in claimable expenses.

Ms Smith alone last year claimed £135,000 for this and that – and that’s aside from her huge salary. What really galls me though is the fact that Mr Timney, her husband, is paid £20,000 of taxpayers money a year for acting as her Personal Assistant. Nice work if you can get it eh…?

And get this…last year she actually claimed 88p for a sink plug she had to buy – 88p!!! as if she could not afford to foot the cost of that herself. What else does she claim…botox, microdermabrasion, brazilians…? what a life.

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