Liz Truss And The Curious Case Of The Peignoirs In The Night!

Lizz Truss. You know, the British PM after Boris Johnson? Stop asking 'Who?' dammit!

Ok, let's get this much out of the way: Former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss didn't purloin £12,000 worth of bathrobes (approximately 2,034,960 Japanese Yen) exactly. That's just what the Daily Mail tabloid made it sound like with the headline "Liz Truss refuses to pay £12,000 in missing bathrobes row" ( row here is British for fuck-tussle ). The £12,000 (20,462 Canadian Dollars) was actually the total amount the British government wants back from Truss, the shortest-serving prime minister in British history, for expenses that she and aides and hangers-on ran up — mostly for food and alcohol, but including items that went missing — at her government residence in the days before she actually became prime minister.

Previously:  Liz Truss Resigns, Leaving UK Without A Queen Again 

This would be a much better story if the entire amount had been for bathrobes, and we sincerely apologise for being taken in by the Daily Mail's clickbait headline. Those responsible have been sacked.

We should also point out that neither that Daily Mail story nor a follow-up story about the row (rhymes with now when you're talking about a dust-up) ever gets around to mentioning the actual value of the gone-missing bathrobes and slippers, leaving the reader to imagine that it still must have been one bigass pile of terrycloth and whatever it was the slippers were made of. But the follow-up, noting that Truss will pay her bill after all, does include a helpful stock photo to help the reader understand the concept of "bathrobe," including the caption "Ms Truss has now said she was happy to replace anything missing from the 115-room country retreat in Kent, reported to include bathrobes and slippers (file image)."

So what else was included in that £12,000 (269,855 Mexican Pesos) bill from Truss's wild parties at Chevening, the 115-room 17th Century mansion where Truss lived while she was Foreign Minister? Sounds pretty wild!

A source said: ‘Liz used Chevening as a mini No 10, holding meetings with her inner circle which often turned into parties in the evening.

The Cabinet Office was told by staff at the house that items such as towelling robes and even slippers vanished during that period, and have asked her to cover the cost.

‘They have also objected to the idea that the taxpayer should foot the bill for what were basically a series of summer parties, and say she owes more than £12,000 for it.’

Most of the costs Truss is being billed for are for food and wine and other hospitality stuff that wasn't strictly government business, which Truss isn't disputing at all. We finally found an estimated bathrobe tally when we looked at a Guardian column on l'Affaire du Peignoir:  

Most of the bill relates to hospitality, but charges for some missing items are raising eyebrows. It seems someone in Truss’s circle made off with bathrobes worth about £120. Slippers were also pilfered. While I am sure it’s completely unrelated, the Guardian reported last year that traces of a white powder suspected to be cocainewere found at Chevening in the days before Truss became prime minister. I am not saying that Truss held cocaine-fuelled raves where people danced around in misappropriated bathrobes, I am just saying that when you put all these facts together this is the sort of imagery that comes to mind.

So basically this is bog standard People In Government Really Know How to Party stuff, and the missing bathrobes actually came to about £120, or 133 Swiss Francs, but if you insist that would be $150 US, which is still some pricey bathrobes, as far as we can tell from a glance at the bathrobe offerings on Amazon, where the prices average in the $20-$40 range, with some luxury options near $100.

In conclusion, you shouldn't party hearty on the government tuppence, and for Crom's sake leave the bathrobe where you found it, it's not yours.

[ Daily Mail / Guardian / Image generated by Stable Diffusion AI ]

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