Mandelson's £391,000 office makeover

[POSTMAN]

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/859 ... e-makeover" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

PAMPERED Peter Mandelson has blown £80,000 from public funds on a makeover for his swanky Government office while lecturing British workers on tightening their belts.

New figures reveal that the fussy Business Secretary decided a £20,000 re-decoration completed only weeks before his cabinet comeback was not to his liking.

And within three months “Makeover Mandy” had lavished a further £57,000 of Government cash on his Whitehall den.

Lord Mandelson recently caused anger by telling jobless British workers battling to find work in the recession to get on their bikes to look for employment in Europe.

Last night Conservative whip John Baron said: “To the many people up and down the country tightening their belts in the face of an alarmingly deep recession, this will appear to be an extravagant use of taxpayers’ money.”

In total, taxpayers spent £391,000 last year on sprucing up offices for Mandelson and his junior ministers at the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory reform.

The figures, revealed in a series of Parliamentary questions, will infuriate workers and bosses alike as they struggle to hang on to their jobs.

One Westminster source said yesterday: “It will make ordinary working people sick to hear that the Secretary of State who is supposed to be saving their jobs blows 200 times the average weekly wage on decorating his office.

“It shows how pampered and out of touch he and his friend the Prime Minister have become.

“These new figures show that nothing much as changed in Mandelson’s priorities. He’s still more interested in his own comfort than he is in helping the taxpayers.”

Mandelson was brought back into Government last October to spearhead Gordon Brown’s credit crunch rescue package.

Within weeks he was being grilled over his luxury lifestyle and his relationship with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska.

The metals tycoon wined and dined Mandy aboard his luxury yacht while the politician was a powerful EU Trade Commissioner.

An inquiry cleared Mandelson of wrong-doing, but his new DBER ministerial brief was stripped of responsibility for exposing business corruption.

The controversial Labour politician was twice forced to resign from the cabinet under Tony Blair. He quit as Trade and Industry Secretary in 1998 when he failed to reveal all about a £373,000 loan from Labour MP

Geoffrey Robinson to buy a London home.

Three years later he lost a second cabinet post as Northern Ireland Secretary when he was accused of trying to fix a British passport for an Indian businessman who had given £1,000,000 to Labour’s Millennium Dome.

[k979aaa]

How dare he lecture us on the rights and wrongs of the postal service when he :mfo has all the extravagance of sir fred goodwin!. And then he turns around and says you posties should back my plan or you will lose your jobs and pensions if i don't give my mates at TNT a nice juicy cut of royalmail!. Well this man :mfo is a parasite always was and always will be!. :mfo :mfo :mfo :mfo :mfo :mfo :mfo

[Pinky 1]

Let's get some perspetive here. It will take me 20 years to earn what "Mandy" has spent on decorating his offices.....That's if i've still got a job

[Thorby Bislam]

Excellent first post, Pinky. Welcome to the forum and we hope you'll stick around for a long while.

[Pinky 1]

Well thank you for the welcome Thorby. I've come across this place purely by chance, and found it quite enlightening. There's more information here than on our notice boards ! Hope i can stick around .....

[pocky20]

well said pinky this mandy guy is always up to his neck in it. you only have to look him up, on the net .he is a del boy always looking a fast buck how the hell can the gov let him get away with this spend when he is saying all the crap he is saying about saveing lol makes me sick boot him out brown is a clown as well hope the people see whats this guy is realy like but you cant say to much on here about mandy and the things he has done in his past :mfo :mfo :mfo :mfo :mfo