The Sunday Times - Britain ( Timesonline.co.uk )
October 2004

Tony Blair last year remortgaged the home he owns at Trimdon in his Sedgefield constituency. Blair, who is buying a £3.6m home in London, has received £43,000 in the past three years for running the Trimdon property, which he bought for £30,000.

MP BENEFITS
Members are entitled to a basket of benefits that can look after their every need. Most are received tax-free
On their second home, MPs can get:
Free television licence
Food and drink paid for while staying in second home
Free furniture, including bed
Free dishwasher, fridge and other electrical appliances 
Free house and contents insurance
Decoration and maintenance costs
Mortgage interest reimbursed

If they leave parliament, ex-MPs can keep goods

Other perks include:
Car mileage allowance of 57.7p a mile for the first 20,000 miles. The amount above the Inland Revenue-approved rate of 40p is taxed
MPs aged over 50 who lose their seat after two terms are paid a year’s salary
Payment of £32,286 for winding up the office of a defeated MP
Free travel for MPs’ spouses and children for 30 single journeys per year between London and the constituency

 

Obituaries
link to the Archives page

A short tribute
to a family pet..

A little bit of poetry,
author unknown

Trimdon 1850-1920 , History from the rubbish dump, by George Robson

The Sad Death of C. Sense

Experience is a wonderful thing:
it enables you to recognise a mistake when you make it again.

If the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, maybe yours needs a little more tending.

Man and the turtle are very much alike.
Neither makes any progress without sticking his neck out

Positive thoughts generate power, negative ones waste it

By the time you have money to burn, the fire’s gone out....

"The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different.”
Hippocrates

Men are like fine wine..
They start out as grapes, and it's up to the women to stomp the crap out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with.

"To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may just be the world"

ONE pound a week will supply water for an entire village in Tanzania', says Oxfam.
So how come the Water Board charge £20 a month for a terraced house in Trimdon?

“As you get older three things happen.
The first is your memory goes, and.......
I can't remember the other two”
Sir Norman Wisdom

“You know you're getting fat when you can pinch an inch on your forehead.”
John Mendoza

“As we grow older, our bodies get shorter and our anecdotes longer. “
Robert Quillen

“People say that age is just a state of mind. I say it's more about the state of your body. “
Geoffrey Parfitt

The Jokes section - a few pages of humour to brighten the day..