MP's Expense Scandal

Rather typically for the United Kingdom, the expenses being claimed by our MPs are not particularly exciting or glamorous. If the honourable member for Chiswick had bought a Kalashnikov rifle or a crate of Brut champagne for some 'friends' whose names are known to the Flying Squad, that might be interesting, but household items are not. We just don't do scandal very well in this country, do we? 

What makes the expenses scandal really awful, though, is the drip-drip nature of the revelations. As the expenses are published over the course of days, people will cease to care for the detail of the story (which may show them that the MP concerned did not cheat after all) and just look at the headline and make up their minds there and then that the MP or MPs are corrupt so and so's.

And in the meantime, while we in the UK are fretting over our MPs, another scandal - and a proper one at that - continues to unfold in Brussels, as it has done for many years: that of MEPs playing the EU system for all it is worth. Donal Blaney has a very interesting video here.

The EU itself has many questions to answer about how it conducts itself. Someone correct me if I am wrong, but haven't auditors refused to sign off the EU's accounts for over a decade due to financial irregularities. CAP is a (very bad) joke. Goodness knows what goes on in its various dark euro-holes. At least in China you know that if the Government knocks on your door, you are screwed. The EU likes to pretend it is a credible body. The Daily Telegraph ought to turn its attention eastwards next.