By Special Request

One assumes most readers of this blog are in fact actual tax-payers. While feeling fleeced by your local or national government you are no doubt hoping that at least the chunk of your own money taken from you is being put to some productive purpose. Services such as police, fire, armed services, libraries, a hospital charity ward perhaps. How would you like to know what you are really paying for:

Documents submitted to the Commons authorities show Ms Smith has claimed £150,304 for the cost of running a second home since 2001, including fully fitting it out.

The Sunday Express has seen the documents that show Ms Smith has claimed for virtually every major household item over the past five years, right down to the kitchen sink.

It was a £550 stone model from Habitat. The minister, who earns £141,866-a-year, even claimed for an 88p bath plug.

She had already spent £460 on a dining room table, £704 on a sofabed, and £1,000 on an antique fireplace. She claimed for the cost of coal to burn in it.

Other items included a Hotpoint cooker, at £399 plus £15 connection, a Hotpoint tumble dryer worth £189 and two washing machines in under two years, a £249 Ariston and a Zanussi worth nearly £300.

Her entertainment centre was to include DVD players, two Samsung widescreen televisions and two digital set-top boxes worth more than £1,100.

Of course, all expensed with your tax-payer money. Do keep that in mind the next time you hear the siren sound from the truly deluded claiming the problem is not enough tax being forced out of the individual.

Let 1,000 tax havens bloom before one red penny goes any further.