SO how much did you blow on your summer holiday? Wait, let me guess.
Was it so significantly more than you budgeted for that you daren’t open your credit card bill without sitting down with a large measure of Scotch?
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Thought so. That’s the thing about holidays. They cost a bomb.
Unless, of course, you happen to be Angela Rayner, the “by ’eck I’m so bloody normal, me” Deputy Prime Minister.
Down-to-earth Ange doesn’t worry so much about what her ’bobs will cost because, well, someone else is usually chipping in.
You might remember that excruciating video of her dancing behind the DJ booth at the swanky Hi Ibiza club that emerged recently.
It was accompanied by some equally toe-curling outpourings from Never-Kissed-A-Tory types, hyperventilating on Twitter/X about how brilliant it was that we have a senior member of the Government who loves to party.
“Go Ange, throw them shapes babe,” they trilled, patting themselves on the back that they’d voted in someone so with it.
’Avin’ it Ange hit back at any critics of her cheesy moves, declaring: “Yes, I’m working class. I like a dance.” As if dancing was an exclusively working-class activity.
Anyway, her “out out” night was paid for by someone else — her friend the DJ’s agent, to be precise — to the techno tune of £836.
We know this because she has just been forced to tell us by way of the MPs’ register of interests.
This is the same register where she declared another freebie holiday treat over New Year last year, this time a five-night stay at a plush £2million flat in New York, which she reckoned was only worth £1,250.
That apartment, complete with Jacuzzi and “breathtaking” views of the Empire State Building, was owned by . . . you guessed it, Labour’s favourite sugar daddy, Lord Waheed Alli (currently under investigation over his interests by the House of Lords sleaze watchdog).
Feisty Ange, the MP for Ashton-under-Lyne, who earns at least £91,346 a year plus a ministerial bump of £31,600, also used the apartment to entertain her fancy man at the time, then-Labour MP Sam Tarry.
Oh, and before you think it’s a bit off that an elected representative is accepting such lavish gifts from people who might want a favour in return, she insisted that Lord Alli — who has also donated £21,200 to her for “support” in her role as Labour’s deputy leader and “undertaking parliamentary duties” — hadn’t asked for anything.
Oh no, it was just a pal helping out a pal.
But it’s not just her “mates” that Spongerla loves blagging things from (and she’s also another one who likes her freebie clothes).
She doesn’t mind dipping into our pockets, too.
Remember when she bought herself a load of fancy Apple gear, including an iPad and some £249 AirPods and sent us, the taxpayer, the bill?
She even tried to put another pair of £139 AirPods on expenses until The Sun exposed it and she repaid the cash.
It was around this time she was on her soapbox blasting the Tories — she calls them “scum”, our Ange — for their “catalogue of waste”, insisting Labour would bring in “high standards for all public spending”.
Well, now we know about her high standards when it comes to filling her boots.
With the Ibiza freebie now under the microscope, Spongerla’s poncing is finally — and deservedly — centre stage.
In many ways, her gift gluttony is worse than Free Gear Keir’s because of who she has cast herself as in public life.
The damage is done
She would have us believe she is one of us, our representative on Planet Politician — a selfless, working-class woman of the people.
It is this image that she would like her £68,000-a-year taxpayer-funded vanity photographer to capture.
Now there are demands for her to pay back the £836 along with Sir Keir’s nonsensical list of freebies he’s paying back.
Frankly, I don’t care if she does or she doesn’t. The damage is done.
Spongerla has shown us that she, too, can be just as grasping a “public servant” as the rest of them.
Meanwhile, the list of Labour faces blagging football tickets continues.
This week it was the turn of the enigmatic Sue Gray — for it is she — to score another own goal for Labour after it emerged she took free tickets to Tottenham Hotspur games.
No wonder we plebs struggle to secure seats for the Prem — the stands are full of freeloading “socialists”.
Stan’s the man – and Donald will hate him
I SAW a fantastic film this week – The Apprentice.
Charting the rise of ol’ big head himself, Donald J Trump, it is a superbly executed study of megalomania.
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Trump will privately hate it, not least because it shows him raping his own wife, Ivana, moments after humiliating her by coldly informing her he is no longer attracted to her.
(Ivana, who died in 2022, did once suggest he raped her, but he has denied it and never been charged with it or any rape.)
With the film released on October 18 in the UK – just weeks before the US election – Trump’s haters will hope it damages his bid to become president again. I doubt that.
The Don will brush it off in his trademark style: “A very bad film, maybe the worst film ever made, the guy who plays me is a loser”etc.
But while it may not hurt him, it should do wonders for the career of the brilliant actor who plays him, Sebastian Stan, pictured with Maria Bakalova as Ivana, whose portrayal of Trump’s ascendancy from hapless suburban landlord to maniacal Manhattan magnate is pitch perfect.
He deserves an Oscar nod at least.
And if that happens, I’ll bet a crisp ten dollar bill Trump will think it is actually for him.
I SEE crafty Oasis fans are hoping to sneak their drugs into the band’s Manchester Heaton Park summer shows by burying them in advance.
This probably sounded like a great ruse during a night chained to the mirror and the razor blade, but the tactic may not prove that clever on the day.
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All security guards need to do is look out for anyone wandering around staring at Google Maps with a puzzled look on their face . . . while holding a shovel.
Toxic chant shame
I’M glad Spurs are kicking off at their fans for the homophobic chants at the Man United match last weekend.
It wasn’t just on the terraces that these oiks decided to indulge in one of the worst of the low-IQ behaviours – it was in the tram on the way to the ground, too.
I was travelling to the game with my teenage son and we’re used to lairy bantz on the short trip from Piccadilly to Old Trafford – we’ve even been known to join in (don’t tell his mum).
But these chants were another level – targeting mainly Arsenal players and managers from over the decades with taunts about being gay and/or a paedophile.
They were puerile, desperately unfunny and delivered with an excruciating kind of malice.
It’s at moments like these when you realise that, of course, gay football players stay in the closet.
The game is still too pathetically toxic to handle them.
United front
HELPED an old boy with directions to a Japanese restaurant after Sunday’s Man Utd game.
He was born and bred in Manchester, but had moved to Oz and hadn’t been back for 50 years.
We joked there can’t have been many Japanese restaurants when he was last here.
But one thing has stayed the same – United were crap then as well.
The 74/75 season saw them grinding away in the Second Division, having fallen out of the top league for the first time in four decades.
Boris missus point
BORIS JOHNSON finally releases his memoir about, er, how brilliant Boris Johnson is, next week.
Place your order now if you want to hear how he thinks he handled being Mayor of London and running the country during Covid.
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Boris is a funny bloke who, having swallowed both an English and a Latin dictionary, has a wonderful way with words.
So his epic 784-page beast of a book is narrated in his customary Billy Bunter banter.
But it won’t be for everyone, especially if, like me, you have no desire to revisit the misery of lockdown.
Most significantly, it is missing some of the juicier ingredients of BoJo’s life – perhaps because they don’t paint him in such a heroic light.
But this is the book I’d like to read – a warts ’n’ all account of how this legendary swordsman and father-of-eight conducts himself when the eyes of the world are not upon him (Boris Johnson Unsheathed?).
I can’t help but feel the newspaper that has been running extracts from his new tome would rather have had that, too.
On day four of its serialisation, Boris’s image once again adorned the front page.
And just above that was a headline which screamed: Here’s Why I Left My Wife For My Mistress.
Alas, despite the clear symmetry with their thrice-married author, it was for an unconnected story.
Grim up north
FAIR play to Baby Reindeer star Richard Gadd tootling about in a battered old Skoda.
He lives in North London, where I also live and drive around in my battered old Nissan.
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The reason my car is covered in dents and scrapes is probably the same reason Richard’s is – thanks to other careless drivers.
Every time I see a brand new car parked on my street, I wonder how long it will be before it gets damaged.
In crowded cities, owning a fancy new car is a mug’s game.
