Shamed former Labour MP Jim Devine is facing a £100k debts bill, they may take his life but they are also going to take ..... his money!!!!!!

Dear All

The Jim Devine saga rolls on; the latest piece of heartbreaking news is that former Labour MP Jim Devine has potential debts of £100k.

In layman’s terms he hasn’t a pot to piss in.

But good news for his creditors, they should be okay as assets of more than £165k have been identified.

That’s bad news for Devine currently serving a sentence in HMP Longpoke!

Since being jailed for 16 months after being found guilty of fiddling his parliamentary expenses, life has continued to plunge to new depths of despair for him.

On the bright side he gets 3 hots and a cot via the taxpayer.

Johnston Carmichael, the Edinburgh-based insolvency specialist has estimated that the one-time Labour representative has assets of at least £166,052.

Some of this is tied up in property, either in full or partial ownership of three properties across the UK and the housing market is slowing!

The tally according to the formal list of Devine’s debts to unsecured creditors is £48,272 to various parties including:

£5000 to the Bank of Scotland
£8385 to the Department of Resources in the House of Commons
£34,887 to his former office manager, Marion Kinley

Hefty wedges of cash in anyone’s mind.

Plus another £50,000 for future claims that are as yet unknown.

Now to the assets which look like being sold off:

Home in Blackburn, West Lothian worth around £145,000.
His £190,000 London flat
A half-share in a property he co-owns with his estranged wife.

Then there is the £32,000 resettlement grant from the Commons.

Marion Kinley said:

“It is clear that I can be paid in full, given the total value of Jim Devine’s assets. The outstanding debt can even be repaid without his wife’s house being sold.”

Good news for a victim of bullying.

Leaving aside the party politic issues, this is no way to leave public office or act that way in it.

If Jim Devine had played it straight, he could have had a decent lifestyle doing interesting and varied work.

Instead he is sitting in a prison cell, a pariah whose career was destroyed by his own hands.

The only sympathy you could have for him is that he and others were ‘scapegoats’ staked out to appease the public.

Many others haven’t been brought to book because they elected to pay the money back quietly.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University