Dorothy Gibson: Small minded twerp.

Europe Direct in the North East were busted good and proper by some UKIP members who had set up a faux event and applied for funds. It was a joke that merely pointed out how weak their checking systems were.

Essentially they ran by the follwing rule, if it is in favour of the EU we will give it money and bunting.

Having been called the sensible approach would be,
"All right, hands up, we're busted. We will ensure that we tighten our criteria. Ho ho Ho".

If they had done that, even the Ukippers who set up the sting would have come over all Australian,
"Fair play cobber".
Chuckled and gone to the pub to celebrate a little victory over the beast.

But of course that is not how the humerless numbnuts that run EU propaganda organisations work now is it?

Remember they offered a cheque for the sum of £50 pounds. It was never even sent, let alone cashed. Cost to the taxpayer? Zero, barring a little embarrasment for the authorities.

So what did they do?

First tried to pretend that they were on the case before it was mentioned to the press.
"Our systems work", they said - yeah right.

Now they have gone one further.

They reported the joke to the local Trading Standards office

“The checking and vetting procedures we have in place raised concerns about this application and guidance was sought from Durham County Council’s trading standards service. "

To their credit Trading Standards conducted a cursory investigation,which resulted thusly,

Durham County Council’s trading standards officials ruled there was no further action they could take because they would have difficulty proving UKIP intended to defraud Europe Direct – especially as the party claimed it would not have cashed any cheque received.

Surely that should have been it? Involving trading standards, even at a cursory level will have put the cost of the affair to upwards of £1000 of rate payers money.

But no, not satisfied with the answer - that is, "It was a joke - get over it" The silly, vindictive, and profligate harridan who runs Europe Direct in the North East, one Dorothy Gibson, cannnot let it lie.

“It is now the intention of the county council to inform the National Anti-Fraud Framework, which alerts all local authorities to incidents of this nature.”

How much will that cost? Who knows but that initial unspent £50 of taxpayers money has now spirralled out of control.

What a petty, vindictive, bureacratic, po-faced carry on. Worse still it is stupid. It has allowed UKIP to show quite how out of touch the EU types are, it shows that they are prepared to spray other people's money around in the pursuit of amour propre.

Do we really want people like Ms Gibson to have any say, whatsoever, in the governance of this land? Do we want her to be paid by us?