Katia - an implausible spy

 

Is there a parallel parliamentary world that I have missed?

I watched today’s news story on parliament’s alleged Russian Spy with jaw dropping incomprehension. There is a prolonged detailed vetting of all those who seek parliamentary security passes. Katia Zatuliveter was given one. All applicants with overseas connections are subjected to extensive delays. I have had great difficulties with interns from Canada and France. One worked for me for three months without getting full clearance. He had to be admitted as a day visitor on every working day.

If Katia is a spy how did she get through the system?

I will declare an interest I know Mike Hancock and Katia very well.  Mike and I share many interests and agree on 95% of all national and international issues.  He is talented and fiercely independent. His European profile is high on humanitarian issues on which he plays an outstanding courageous leadership role. There is another colourful side to his character that marks him as a maverick who will never reach high office. 

Katia is an affable, serious, highly intelligent woman. Her command of English is superb and she is comfortably at home in the United Kingdom. Her background is international. A great deal of nonsense has been written about her and her family. Her father is not a billionaire Oligarch. Katia’s parents are of modest means. All the conversations I have had with her have been about parliamentary business and gossip – not what I would expect from a Mata Hari. That name is a reminder of a woman who was falsely accused. 

Katia is evidence of the remarkable collapse of the barriers between East and West since 1990 when she was five years old. Was she trained as a Russian Spy in school? As she has spent most of her life outside of Russia, the accusations against her are not immediately plausible.

But the Home Secretary in her wisdom, or not, has authorised her detention. I wonder if she will tell us why? I am prepared to be gobsmacked.

Astonishing news

This is an astonishing fact.

MPs have never claimed for their MORTGAGE payments on expenses.

Got it? In the Mail today and on Radio Five Live last night journalists said they have. Constantly repeating a lie does not make it true. The Times journalist last night compounded the error by defending the claim that David Cameron used all his £24,000 allowance to pay his mortgage payments. He did not. Expenses were permitted on MORTGAGE INTEREST only.  That makes Cameron's claim indefensible because it was paid to buy an extremely expensive house where the mortgage interest payments alone are £24,000.

The housing allowance was intended to cover all second home costs - including council tax and utilities. Neither Osborne or Cameron used it that way. Their interest-only claim was intended to maximise the value of the allowance for financial gain. 

A new stick is being used to beat MPs today. The accusation is again founded on the myth that MPs' mortgages are being paid from the public purpose. Every penny paid to reduce the capital sum has to be paid with the MPs own money. Those accused today can defend themselves by pointing out that it was their money, not the state's, that was used to buy their properties.

Yes, interest was claimed and refurbishment were financed from public funds. Those sums were equivalent to alternative claims that MPs could have had for staying in hotels and rented properties. Not one report I have seen has made the crucial point that mortgage payments have never been paid from public sources.

Many of us pointed out to those who introduced the 'reforms' that the new system would be more expensive. They did not listen. At least one of them did not understand as I discovered when I cross examined him on a Select Committee. Today a new myth is born. This change is an incompetent one that was designed to make MPs poorer but has had the unintended consequences of making some richer.

Before critics pile in, I state my 'lack of interest' in this. I do not rent any property in London and I have no plans to do so. 

 

 

Comments

[John Gibson]

I wonder how many of these female foreign research assistants are overweight and unattractive?!

It seems a pity that so many MPs prefer young foreigners to young Britons as research assistants. How many British young people work in the Russian parliament?

[Paul Flynn]

no, I have never had foreign nationals as research assistants -only as interns when they are added value. The security checks are a great dis-incentive.

[HuwOS]

Isn't this exactly the kind of thing to light the fires of British(more likely English) patriotism, the idea that they might just be important enough for people (who aren't from the U.S.) to bother spying on them.

[Paul Flynn]

Right rwendland. Katia is certainly not stupid. She would have to be to behave in the manner suggested. It did not take a genius to spot her connections with Russia.

[rwendland]

It's a funny kind of spy that does a Masters degree in Peace Studies at Bradford University. Talk about drawing attention to yourself.

[Paul Flynn]

Welcome back, Jolly Roger. Your verse has been missed. Dozens of blogs will dump on Mike Hancock today. Much of it will be justified, much will not. You wisely read this site where I always avoid statements of the bleeding obvious.

[Paul Flynn]

Tiresias, the past system invited abuse, the present system will cost more and is wide open to be exploited. Read Adam Afriye debate of last week. He makes a sound case for a simpler fairer cheaper system.

[Paul Flynn]

Willsted, the standards of surveillance for claeners are not as rigid as they should be for MPs reseachers.

[Tiresias]

It's the sheer incompetence of the Parliamentary expense system that offends me, plus the weaselly little petit-bourgeois tricks many MPs have used to wangle a few extra quid out of it. In any sensible organisation, expenses are handled by a friendly but inflexible person with, perhaps, a couple of assistants who calmly tell you why you can't claim for a new umbrella. Senior management don't have to get involved.

MPs, though, chose to dress up part of their salary as expenses and then went to the trouble of inserting an exemption in our tax legislation just for themselves. Many of them then spent hours of their valuable time trying to scam the system. Thus they managed to make a total Horlicks of this simple back-office function, so that they now have to spend millions of our money a year in effort to demonstrate their honesty.

[DG]

This government doesn't "do" evidence.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/dec/05/government-scientific-advice-drugs-policy

Basing policy more on how people *feel* about it (as shown by focus groups and poll ratings) is surely far better than basing it on what so-called experts *think* about it.

As a wise man once said, "You can prove anything with facts, can't you?"

*The above post is typed with tongue-in-cheek.

[Paul Flynn]

My comment was carefully worded to avoid the excited reporting of the tabloids. Its aim was to be fair to both Mike, who has virtues as well as weaknesses, and Katia.

I am curious about a process that allow the home Secretary to expel someone on the basis of no evidence presented to any answerable body - even one that is held in camera. As I said I am prepared to be gobsmaked. but do sleeper spies parade their Russian names, accents and loyalties?

[MuscularLiberal]

Thanks Jolly Roger. Paul, I'm astounded that you and Mike Hancock both seem to think this woman cannot be a spy - in spite of the security services strong assertion that she is - simply because you have met her and found her 'affable'. Sleeper agents are supposed to be affable Paul, it's kind of their job. A quick glance over her published articles tells us swiftly that this woman is, at the very least, a fanatical supporter of Putin and the current regime http://bit.ly/ihQPfz which - considering they are a threat to us and have been accused of murder in the UK and trying to undermine British security, is pretty worrying in a Parliamentary Researcher.

[Kay Tie]

"against Home Office advice"

To be fair to Paul, past evidence indicates that Home Office advice is inversely correlated with the truth. One merely has to look at the policy-based evidence for drugs to see this.

The Home Office was and remains the most dysfunctional of all departments. I no longer believe anything it says without corroboration. And let us remember that the security services haven't covered themselves with the glory of trust ever since we saw how the Dodgy Dossier was prepared.

[Willscookson]

But this is the thing. I can understand why you might exchange researchers between parliaments for experience etc. But why are you having foreign nationals as research assistants?

[Jeremy Poynton]

@Willsteed

Every time she opens her mouth more like.

All women shortlists? Yes, except when my husband is concerned.

Gnnah. A former Labour voter of over three decades who will never vote Labour again.

[Praguetory]

Are you a traitor or a fool? Agreeing with Hancock on 95% of international matters is bad enough, but digging your heels in against Home Office advice takes the biscuit.

[Kay Tie]

"Constantly repeating a lie does not make it true."

Something your colleague Harriet Harman should remember when she repeats the lie about the gender pay gap.

[Willsteed]

'There is a prolonged detailed vetting of all those who seek parliamentary security passes. ...All applicants with overseas connections are subjected to extensive delays.'

In that case how is it that not so long ago a Brazilian illegal (who had somehow 'fled immigration' at Heathrow) was found to be working in the HoC as a cleaner, using a faked id? Sorry to say the credibility of the article tanked on the first paragraph!

[Jolly Roger]

It's Jolly Roger here, back from the brink.
It seems that your mate Hancock is causing a stink.
Currently on Police bail, accused of sexual harassment.
I do hope he doesn't cause you too much embarrassment.
You've nailed your colours tight to his mast,
Despite his somewhat 'interesting' past.
And with this latest 'revelation', I think,
That you may wish to check out the following link.

http://www.muscularliberal.com/stories/mike-hancock-mp-threat-national-security

The comments, it seems, are well worth a click.
The mud's flying fast. Some's bound to stick.