Labour MP Margaret Moran is facing investigation for allegedly using HoC stationary in a dispute with neighbours in Spain, reports a recent article in the Daily Telegraph. Moran is one of many MPs under fire for fiddling expenses in the UK.
Moran also caused controversy when she used her parliamentary office expenses to pay a legal bill after the dispute with her neighbours in Carataunas, in the Alpujarras mountains of Andalusia, Southern Spain.
Moran, who shares the property with her brother, was taken to court by angry neighbours after blocking a public path that went over her property.
Blocking the path infuriated some of her neighbours, who were forced to find alternative routes to their homes. Moran is allegedly to have used House of Commons headed paper to post a note justifying her action, a claim she vehemently denies.
Police had to intervene to prevent the dispute with her neighbours getting out of hand, reveals a recent article in the Spanish daily ABC. The argument was finally settled in court in the local town of Orgiva.
The court ordered Moran to restore the path and desist from blocking the public right of way again.
Moran has made some enemies amongst the local population on account of her arrogance, rudeness and stubbornness, claims the article in ABC. “She’s a bad person” one local resident told ABC. Moran reportedly hardly ever visits and never mixes with the locals when she does.
Moran is one of the many MPs under fire for fiddling expenses in the UK. The Daily Telegraph has revealed that Moran ‘flipped’ her second home to a seaside house in Southampton, a hundred miles from her constituency of Luton South, and then spent 22,500 pounds of tax payers money treating it for dry rot.
“Over a four-year period, she also spent thousands of pounds on decorating, repairs and furnishings on three separate properties, switching between Westminster, Luton and Southampton and doing up each home in turn,” says the Daily Telegraph.
Carataunas, where Moran’s Spanish home is located, is the least populated municipality in the Alpujarras, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.. A census in 2008 found just 197 inhabitants, of which 47 were foreign, almost half of them British.
800 metres above sea level, Carataunas and the Alpujarras have been popular with British immigrants since the first half of the 20th century, when it became a writers’ colony, lead by Gerard Brenan, part of the Bloomsbury set.
The Alpujarras are also the setting for Chris Stewart’s bestselling book Driving Over Lemons.
