Snouts in the trough - perks for Chinese politicians

So we have politicians going to a wedding or two, peddling a little on expenses and doing an occasional vineyard tour. Small beer really compared with some of their Chinese peers who really know how to get their snouts in the trough.

Or maybe the word should be should be trotters not snouts. Whatever. Communist Party officials in Henan province are giving a new meaning to the term “government pork.”  They ran up a bill for $US115,000 at a locally famous pig trotter restaurant over the course of three years while entertaining visiting cadres on “inspection tours” which determined the size of government grants.

Henan’s culinary largess ran into problems in this new age of official discouragement of corruption and excess when the restaurant proprietor, faced with bankruptcy because the bills were never paid, used a Chinese variant of whistle blowing to capture attention. According to reportshe tacked up two giant red banners outside his restaurant outlining how much the town Party heads owed. Days later, the local government had settled the bill and the officials were suspended.