Tax-Funded Stationery Used To Disseminate Nonsense

Elected idiot for Spelthorne in Surrey, David Wilshire (Conservative), has raised eyebrows by comparing the treatment of MPs embroiled in the expenses scandal with that of Jews in Hitler’s Third Reich.

“The witchhunt against MPs will undermine democracy. It will weaken Parliament,” he wrote in a letter to constituents, reportedly written on Commons note paper and sent using taxpayer-funded pre-paid envelopes.

“Branding a whole group of people as undesirables led to Hitler’s gas chambers.”

Tory leader David Cameron responded by ordering Wilshire to retract the “ludicrous” comments.

Jewish groups and others were quick to condemn the insensitivity of the comments. Labour MP Denis MacShane said, “To compare the treatment of MPs with the plight of Jews in the Second World War is grotesque.”

Wilshire was at a major figure in the expenses scandal and is set to quit at the next election. He claimed the maximum allowance for a second home in London even though his constituency home was in a commuter belt. It is alleged he paid £105,000 from his Commons expenses to his own firm. Wilshire had earlier in his career courted controversy by vocally opposing Princess Diana speaking in the House of Commons about landmines in 1997, following an invite from the newly-elected Labour government. In 1998, he called for the former Chilean dictator, General Pinochet, to be released from house arrest in London.