The data on MPs' expenses reportedly cost the Telegraph £150,000. They today report that those Members found to be at it have already agreed to pay back more than £100,000 of taxpayers' money. There's surely more to come, not least from Elliott Morley, who's on the shoogliest of pegs. Once this episode is over, everyone who deserves it should get value for money, and those who deserve censure should get their fair share, even if we don't eventually see actual tumbrils.
Taxpayers will get a substantial refund, a gargantuan round of schadenfreude, and should see a few rogues chucked out of the Commons. As it becomes harder for Honourable Members to do the Maltese breast-stroke, we should all see long term savings in this area.
The Telegraph, for their part, have had a substantial boost to their circulation and profile which will justify their shareholders' investment in this data. Their public interest defence also seems impeccable, given that the worst "flippers" (Morley, Blears, George, Darling etc) would have got away with it if the information had been redacted.
Some people are bored of this now. Not I. I've been lectured on morality for decades by these hypocrites. I've watched them condemn refugees to destitution and force the unemployed into grim make-work schemes. I've seen them make grandiose claims on child poverty and fail, and poverty was never made history internationally either.
These are abstract problems, issues these cross-party scoundrels at Westminster might never have felt public anger on. But now we know precisely where their double standards lie. This issue has delivered their comeuppance, now the public have found them using our money to refurbish their moats, support their daughters' student flats, pay for their feather dusters and Hob Nobs, and save their marriages with cash injections.
One last thought on the moats issue. As always, read the Daily Mash.
Leave a comment