Interesting developments

Some interesting developments in the MP's Expenses Scandal. Actual resignations and firings and demotions. I thought it had taken them a while to get around to taking action and I now find it's been an issue for even longer than I imagined. Heather Brooke had been trying to obtain information about expenses since 2004, legitimately, using the Freedom of Information Act. She was taken all the way to the High Court at taxpayers expense to try and get this information that, gallingly for her, has now been freely leaked. Incredibly, alongside spurious sounding arguments about personal security, MP's even tried to engineer an amendment so that the FOI Act didn't apply to them!

Slightly vindicated also in Alexander Chancellor taking Stephen Fry to task. Not how I would have put it, but Fry certainly is an unlikely champion for MP's and they don't have many friends left. To be fair though, I don't think Fry was doing anything other than pointing out the potential for journalists hypocrisy and perhaps taking a John 8:7 viewpoint. I'm sure if he met Miss Brooke (maybe he has, he famously knows everyone who is anyone), he'd find it quite a difficult view to maintain in the face of a fiercely determined and upright (and also rather pretty) young woman. And as more and more is revealed by the Telegraph (which is presenting the story in the manner of a burlesque artiste; one wonders whether there is anything really saucy left to be shown before the lights go out), he might also regret making the point about the public interest being "bourgeoise". As Paul Weller once sang, the public gets what the public wants, and "national treasure" status may not be a permanent award, and the appearance of arrogance or snobbery would be a good enough reason to withdraw it.

Another bible verse brought to mind is Romans 3:23 when reading James Macintyre in the New Statesman who names only four MP's that can have a clear conscience out the 650. I'm happy to name one of them as Ed Milliband. As the Climate Change Secetary was appearing at Old Billingsgate for the most recent Prince of Wales May Day Summit, he disembarked from a snazzy silver Merc and went into the street entrance at the same time as me. I think I may have been mistaken for one of his entourage as I got into the evnt with barely any security checks. I noted that there was a massive queue on the riverside public entrance. Another non-transgressor is Hilary Benn (son of Tony), who is environment secretary. Could it be that having the brief of concern for the future of the planet (one of the many things that Fry rightly pointed out MP's should be getting on with) is allied to a sense of probity in other areas. Maybe not in my case, but it is an interesting coincidence. Hilary's old man managed to make Paxman wriggle in his seat on Newsnight the other night, almost getting to the point of "doing a Foulkes" and asking the famed BBC public servant, vicious attack dog and University Challenge host how much he earned.