Blood Sisters

I wrote an article here earlier this month about the Women in Public Life Awards 2009.

You may remember my floating the idea that professional lying scumbag Deborah Arnott, and selfish grasping trougher Baroness Uddin, weren't particularly worthy of being shortlisted.

Now, via Woman on a Raft over at Mark's pad, we find further evidence of the whole event being merely a conduit for self-serving arseholes.

Another shortlisted paragon of womanly drive and virtue was Margaret Moran, the disgusting, mendacious, fraudulent, bigoted bully who swindled £20,000 from the taxpayer to make her holiday home more comfy.

That's not all she was up to, either, as explained by the FT.

The FT has further discovered that Ms Moran used her Commons staff to work for Equality Networks (EQN), a non-profit group of which she is the non-remunerated chair. Michael Booker, her fiancé, is one of two company directors. The company, which states its profit “goes back into regeneration, jobs and skills to some of the most deprived communities in the UK”, offers services including research, training and “influencing”, defined as “legislative advice, relationship building and arranging meetings to parliamentary receptions or political briefings”...

When EQN bids for funding were unsuccessful, Ms Moran repeatedly used Commons-headed paper to intervene with local authorities and Whitehall departments to express her “concern and amazement”. EQN received grants in 2008 from public bodies including £10,000 from Luton Borough Council for local regeneration funding, and £20,000 from the East of England Development Agency’s Investing in Communities programme for a “feasibility study” into a local women’s business centre...

In 2007, Ms Moran claimed £6,052.49 expenses from EQN itself. Another EQN director, Nicholas Murray, asked Ms Moran to include more receipts with her invoice. She replied that she had lost many of them.

Moran seems to be putting together a CV which would impress even the most conniving of embezzlers. So who nominated her for this prestigious award?

Nominated by Kerrie Duggan, Vision Project Manager, eQuality Networks

Yep, one of her and her husband's employees. Quite a gushing tribute too, but then I suppose it would be under the circumstances.

Margaret Moran MP for Luton South is an outstanding woman and one that Luton should be proud of.

Her vision is that of a forward thinking, modern day suffragette and her attitude is one of a high performance athlete. She is the co-author of that very same book and strives to bring more women into parliament.

Energy is one thing she is not short of and ...

Yes, I think that's enough of the brown-nosing. We'll stop before it gets to the 'thinking completely out of the box' stuff.

Fortunately, she was beaten to the prize by a candidate (or 'brazen hussy' as Ian Dale termed her) with much more talent ... for rigging the vote.


Butler, you may remember, is the Labour MP who wrote her own tribute from Barack Obama.


The words of the awards' Patron, Dame Kelly Holmes, hold a certain ironic resonance in light of subsequent revelations, don't you think?

These awards help to highlight and reward the achievements of women and encourage others to pursue leadership roles and to strive for greater representation.

The dubious 'achievements' of these conceited greed-merchants is becoming increasingly 'highlighted', but they don't need rewarding - they're doing that very well themselves from our taxes, thank you very much.

I'm not sure that others should be encouraged to emulate them either.