When a UK Member of Parliament (MP) trends

TUNDE OYEDOYIN  

Tunde Oyedoyin is a London-based personal finance coach and founder of Money Intelligence Coaching Academy, a specialist academy of personal finance. He can be reached as follows: +447846089587 (WhatsApp only); E-mail: tu5oyed@gmail.com

Exactly four months ago in the last piece for January, I wrote on “Did you learn anything from last year?” Some people don’t seem to fancy learning from their personal finance mistakes. It’s a costly thing not to do, especially if it’s a lingering problem for ten years.

As it turned out, a Member of Parliament, MP, was making the headlines recently. But here’s the thing. It wasn’t because he was sponsoring some earth shattering bill in the House of Commons or running the London Marathon to raise funds for charity like a dear family friend, Titi Windapo.

It was because the MP didn’t have sufficient funds of his to get out of the hole he had willingly dug for himself. As a result, he got on the phone in the early hours of one morning late last year, wanting to borrow from campaign donations.

As a matter of fact, the Sunday Mirror editorial of April 21, “Politics is no place for bad people” had the Right Honourable Member of Parliament, Mark Menzies, as its subject matter.

Two days earlier, the Metro Newspaper’s cover story, “MP: I need £5k To Pay Off Bad People,” was about the 52-year old parliamentarian.

There are a few things to unpack from that cover piece, but the one that sums up the MP’s situation was the call he made to the 78-year old former campaign manager at 3.15am. “Are you on your own?” He asked, before then telling her that: “I’ve got in with some bad people” who had locked him in a flat. Guess what? He told her they “want £5000 to release me.” In view of that, Mr MP wanted her to wire it from the Conservatives Party campaign donations.

When she told him she’ll need to get to the branch later in the morning to do that, the MP had the audacity to ask her to use her savings. Wonderment!

Folks, if someone dear to you is in need of emergency medical care and gives you a call at 3.15am or even at midnight, you may consider dipping your hands into your reserves. But yours truly won’t surely fancy using the little he has put away to bail out anymore who rings him in the early hours of the morning needing a ‘get me out of here’ loan!

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