SPENDTHRIFT STREET

ANDY Street billing taxpayers £530.40 to be chauffeured between Birmingham and Heathrow Airport punctures the Tory self-promoter’s mayor-of-the-people shtick.

Receipts obtained by a Freedom of Information request show the West Midlands mini-king breaking a solemn election pledge with “first-class luxury travel” for what is little more than 100 miles each way.

The regal former John Lewis boss declared in his manifesto: “I want to keep the costs of the mayor’s office as low as possible.” Really?

Street and an aide spent a total of £2,216.88 visiting Helsinki for a homelessness conference when there’s little need to fly to Finland to discover why rough sleeping has soared since 2010.

Conservative austerity is largely to blame, so slippery Street should have bought a cheaper £25.50 day return to picket outside 10 Downing Street.

I’m not buying the mayor’s assertion that his expensive 18-hour trip “helped secure £10milion from Government” to help West Midlands homeless. And Birmingham Selly Oak Labour MP Steve McCabe, left, was not impressed either: “The money would have been better spent on night shelters and soup kitchens here in the West Midlands.” HOW opportunist of »

Turkey’s despotic Sultan, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to pose as a press defender after Saudi Arabia’s suspected gruesome assassination of missing writer Jamal Khashoggi. The hit would indeed be terrible and the British Government’s pusillanimity is demeaning but an Erdogan who arrests and jails hundreds of journalists is no friend of freedom.

I’LL answer the question Theresa »

May dodged when Northumberland MP Ronnie Campbell asked last week how much a £768billion national debt inherited from Labour is now. The reply she wouldn’t give is £1.78trillion, more than double the 2010 figure. The recklessly incompetent Tories are the party of high debt, not Labour, and it’s still going up.