Parliament of Fowls

America's The Daily Show has got hold of us now.

The absence as yet of a pithy "-gate" name for this scandal probably shows just how important and system-threatening it is - it can't be neatly pigeonholed and filed away under "Miscellaneous Other News". But evidently people are trying hard.

Thanks to John Rentoul of the Independent for blogging this.

Peter Luff is the next onto the guillotine over £17,000-worth of toilet seats.

There is a train of thought which suggests that newly elected MPs should, in establishing a second household, be able to claim for furnishings and expenses. My mother relates that while we were living between Cemaes Bay in Anglesey and Workington in Cumbria (when I was all of 3 and my sister a baby) she bought duplicates of everything for the other house she had to furnish (my dad worked in Anglesey during the week and we lived back in Cumbria at the weekend, and I remember thinking that was how people rented houses, or what renting a house meant). I can't remember the exact reasons why we didn't just move down to Anglesey anyway (and we stopped coming down when the Welsh playgroup rejected me as not being the child of one or more Welsh language speakers) but apparently the duplication necessary was of the order of highchairs and another cot for my sister. So outfitting two houses for purposes other than scamming the taxpayer doesn't sound too bad to me.

The problem really is, as Owlperson advises from his perch in spirit, that the goods are of a quality not enjoyed by us mere mortals (my mother is a teacher, now a headteacher, and my dad is a civil engineer, and I remember money worries during the mid-80s - "Mummy, if you don't have any money, why do you not go to the hole in the wall to get some" being my response at the time - it is also remarkable how many couples in their network of friends fit that particular pattern, but never mind) and it's the sheer scale of the payments made on the taxpayer's behalf to people who are, in cases like Hogg and other Tory backbenchers, not to mention someone with a long bushy tail and bright cunning eyes who has a bill outstanding for wisteria clearance, already rolling in it.

Luff's card is Death, reversed - another one who, perhaps, might feel he has had a good innings in parliament and will stand aside ready for a foxy-friend to be parachuted in. The end of this scandal - hopefully with the scalps of both current party leaders, if not a hat-trick of top resignations too - cannot come soon enough, and personally, the parties should not be relying too much on their current stable of candidates, given the disgrace the current lot have got us into. My feeling is that the whole parliament will be trashed, the wheat separated from the chaff, and then the candidate list purged of chancers who feel a safe seat is a pension pot waiting to happen. The refreshing thing about this scandal is that it is sweeping through Westminster as a whole, not just ruining one party or the other.

Off with their heads. Good night.

A very interesting piece from the chief executive of the Taxpayer's Alliance, Matthew Elliot.

Reform of parliament must not be left to the politicians themselves to do it - the temptation to gerrymander is always there. Nothing more really to add to this except a card reading for its future prospects (as I suspect some of my one-card readings have been more geared towards the present tense of the situation rather than the future prognosis). I pull IX Wands, reversed - this is one way through the general stockade the wayward parliamentarians have built around themselves. It isn't as crude as the political primaries suggested (I don't agree with this as it would open one party's selection process to meddlesome intruders from other parties, and the London primary, after all, produced Boris Johnson as its result) and it does allow a mechanism of censure that doesn't rely on the honour of someone like Piers Merchant in 1997 but on a formal element of procedure. Owlperson hopes he will be able to whisper this in the ear of the next Prime Minister as it seems this one is finished.

Meanwhile, Jo Swinson is under scrutiny - a friend of mine from university - over her make-up bills and household establishment expenses. Pulling a card for her, it's The Empress, reversed - not a good omen as it is the reverse of a card designed to show the grounded and solid nature of a deep, feminine personality. Thus the facade Swinson shows as a kind of "Blair's Babe" for the Liberal Democrats who once stood up to Shirley Williams over is revealed as vapid and empty as any political hack of the last two decades. She was engaging and focussed at university on the Liberal Democrat caused, while I wavered betweeh Labour and none-of-the-above, unable to commit myself totally to the prevailing winds in student politics and unable to keep my mouth shut at Labour Students' Conference by publicly making a speech against the Women's Network as "jobs for the girls". I gave everything like that up when I walked out of Millbank in late 1999 after a summer job breaking the Labour Party's Excalibur machine. Perhaps I was just not meant to be in politics before this watershed, and it's people like me - who never wanted to be part of any "machine" - who will inherit this earth. Sorry, Jo, but you embody the problem, not the solution.

While I no longer feel jealous of her, my mother and sister raise the question - just how much more expensive is it for women to maintain their appearance compared to men? Is there a point at which make-up for official functions becomes like business miles and normal clothes - incidental expenses. As a woman who doesn't use much make-up but buys moisturiser for my job at a newsagents because putting the papers together in the morning makes my hands black and rather raw, particularly after the ink has been scrubbed off them so I can then go handling the bread order. This needs moisturiser if I am to keep my sanity intact after I've finished (I start work at 7am on Saturday and don't get to go home until 7pm). So - if my boss was not meaner than Gordon Brown on a bad day at the Treasury - I could probably get away with claiming it. I do therefore feel sorry for Jo Swinson, though as I said, thankfully I no longer feel jealous that someone in my year at uni got there before I did.

After all I may still have all that to come (Owlperson's subtle hints notwithstanding as I do not have a party label at the moment) in the post-Expenses Scandal (no pithy "gate" has emerged yet) Parliamentary milieu. That's better than getting a few points on your Boots loyalty card paid for, isn't it?

Quickie this morning as I have to go to work in five minutes.

Eight of Wands, reversed

The momentum is still there but, since the Eight upright suggests a coherent direction forming, for example in this current situation the targetting of fire on one particular party or member, the issue now becomes a lot less controllable and manipulable.

Cameron, meanwhile, is still defending Bill Wiggin, MP for Leominster and a Tory whip:

The future of a third leading Conservative, Bill Wiggin, was also in doubt after The Daily Telegraph claimed that the Conservative whip – a contemporary of Mr Cameron's at Eton – claimed £11,000 in interest payments for a property without a mortgage. He insisted he had not profited and had made "an administrative error", but he could join Labour's "phantom mortage" MPs Elliot Morley and David Chaytor in facing possible criminal proceedings.

Mr Wiggin, the MP for Leominster in Herefordshire, filed for the expenses after declaring that his constituency property was his second home. He stressed yesterday that he meant to claim for his London residence instead.

- The Independent, 21 May 2009

with the Telegraph reporting that Cameron is seeing no need to sack him. The depths of Vulpes Vulpes know no bounds - and yet Benedict Brogan in the Telegraph still finds the nerve to praise him.

Way to go, lads.