[DanaC]

Ya gotta love the Benns.


(though in his day Pa Tony was just as vicious and ruthless as the next front bencher:P)


I am actually very sympathetic to MPs most of the time, and in this expenses row I think the public has been whipped up by the press into a state of righteous indignation at people who actually are pretty good value for money most of the time. I have said on numerous occasions that most people's idea of an MPs life really is very far from the truth. I know several of them and they work frighteningly hard. I also know a couple of workshy, dense-as-fuck, never had a political thought in their lives, no sense of public service, doing it for the perks and press, dickheads. One of them geographically quite close by, I know has wrung every penny she can out of the system, up to and including wages claimed for her husband's 'work'; most of which amounts to running her in-party smear machine.

But most of them are decent folk, doing the best they can in a very difficult environment and no matter how good they are, a single story (let alone a whole slew of them like this) about dodgy claims or bad behaviour will affect how people see them as well. 'They're all the same' is a common complaint. Well...they manifestly aren't. No reason why government should be unique amongst careers in attracting clones. People are, by their very humanity, different from each other.

That said: I still think it shows up some of the most glaring hypocrisy in the higher up echelons of both major parties. The same junior minister I saw on tv arguing that we shouldn't be 'paying people to sit on the dole' and suggesting that alcoholics who fall off their treatment should have their benefits cut as a penalty, has been implicated in over-claiming on his second home.