Crossing the Lyon of Expectations

Yesterday Jeff drew our attention to a story in the Sunday Herald about Lib Dem MEP George Lyon employing his girlfriend in a £36,000 job in his new office. As I couldn't find the story on the online edition of the paper I wasn't able to make comment, but thought it strange (until Jeff pointed out otherwise) that the story from the print edition had not made the online copy.

Sadly the only other paper covering the story is that Red Top that all Red's fans have boycotted for 20 years. But from that I've cleaned the response through his spokesman from George insisting he did nothing wrong. The spokesman said:

"There is no official document saying George and Flora are non-married partners.

"He understood employing a close friend might be against the spirit of the rules.

"But there was an independent interview and the appointment was made on merit."

However, the new European Parliament rules do apparently apply to the banning of employment of spouses and "stable non-marital partners". No matter what the protestations of George about an independent interview in this era of politics of post MP expense this just isn't good enough especially as his official statement says that he acknowledges that it may be against the spirit of the rules. It would appear to be worse than that.

As Jeff rightly points out when Nick Clegg calls for 'politics free of corruption in which power is shifted to the people' on the same day George really needed to thought how those people would have perceived this before even contemplating spirits of laws or otherwise.

I hope that this matter is dealt with swiftly.