The BBC reports that top UK politician Baroness Warsi failed to declare substantial rental income from property she owned.

The baroness had declared the property on the register of ministerial interests, and it had been cleared by the Cabinet Office and HM Revenue and Customs. But she failed to inform the register of Lords' interests that she was letting the property, after she moved to a new home closer to the House of Lords. ... Conservative party sources have described the incident as a 'cock up' which has been remedied.

Sure, there's that old chestnut about mistaking stupidity for malice. But it would take a lot of stupid to not notice how much you make from property that you rent out. What is malice but self-aware stupidity?

  • Purplecat

    I’m not sure what’s worse. Another politician getting caught for  financial misconduct, right after a major scandal that was all about politicians’ incomes (Newsflash- the press check up on these things. You might get caught). Or the fact that we’ve let the world know once again, that we can have a top politician who is a baroness, with all the non-democratically elected baggage that goes with that.

  • http://imcravingpresidency.tumblr.com/ SedanChair

    Tory Loses Track of How Rich She Is, film at 11

  • BrotherPower

    “Curse you, Joes!”

  • Anne Onimos

    Isn’t language wonderful? I clicked on this item to find out exactly *how* a UK politician was financing the scandal of the day (whatever that might be), only to discover I had been led down the path. Of course, a simple possessive could have obviated–or at least diminished–this ambiguity: “UK politician’s finances scandal of the day”.

    (O.T.: Has anyone else noticed how the web is getting slower thanks to the use of included services on pages? This page took about a minute to load–the delay coming from a server of, I think it was,  contextify .net. This kind of lag is not uncommon now that many pages call APIs from often half-a-dozen or more subscribed services. The net effect (pardon) is that, in this time of prevalent broadband Internet, web pages now often take longer to load in the user-agent than they did in dial-up times. Is there a name for this phenomenon?)

    • http://twitter.com/beep54orama B E Pratt

       Uh, same here. I clicked on just to find out how or even why a politician would want to finance a scandal of the day. Although it does sorta sound like politics as usual here in the US.

    • Anne Onimos

       Correction: contextly .com

  • Guido

    Oh, another thing she has in common with the Vatican! No wonder why she admires them so much.

    You nasty secular people, how you dare to examine the finances of a Baroness!

  • Thomas Hicks

    I don’t want to sound like I support her, but she did report the income on the Ministerial register of interests, she just forgot to include it on the more general Lords register as well.

    Having two separate registers of interests (Ministerial and Lords), and then not ensuring that they match up seems slightly messed up to me.

    • TWX

      I share this sentiment to an extent.  I gather that the purpose of this kind of law is to make it harder to buy a politician (though obviously committed politicians and potential buyers can always find a way around those laws), and while it could be possible for someone to exert influence on her by renting property at a far-above-market-value rate, it seems that those scandals usually involve no reporting of income, rather than not reporting it everywhere.

      She certainly deserves to be chewed out for it, but if the property rented at fair market value without undue influence being exerted, then it’s more a cockup than a real scandal, in my eyes.

  • http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan

    But it would take a lot of stupid to not notice how much you make from property that you rent out.

    Or a lot of how much you make

    • http://twitter.com/beep54orama B E Pratt

       Well, here in the US [again] we’ve had people running for President that couldn’t remember how many homes they owned. Does too much money kinda make you stupid??

      • http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan

        Not necessarily. You may, for example, own many pairs of socks. Are you going to notice, or even be aware of, or even care about one more pair here or there?

        But let’s not be disingenuous. That’s missing the point of money. You’re really supposed to know how much you have and how you get it and how you dispose of it and how you move it around because for some reason the state seems to find that sort of thing more important than your socks. Especially if you’re a politician, where the state appears to have no interest at all in your sockage.

  • brianary

    I’m trying to coin “naivevil” as the quality of ignorance or malice, when you don’t really care about the distinction.

    • https://www.facebook.com/rgovrebo B. Peasant

      Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.