Ben Bradshaw has hinted that MPs who have defrauded the taxpayer should be sent to prison.
Ann Main has done a Derek Conway and provided a daughter with a flat on expenses. (By the way, Derek, you can run, but you can't hide - perhaps it was better for you to have been booted a full eighteen months' early; and I'm eager to see the Wintertons and what they can come up with in the way of entertainment. And Iain and Betsy Duncan Smith, although their "crimes" were for misuse of party funds rather than ACA expenses, must be turning in their respective graves too...poor Squirrel Nutkin lost his job over it, hopefully Vulpes Vulpes will follow him with wisteria rather than gladioli hanging out of his trousers, in homage to his hero Morrissey...)
Cards:
Ben's proposal - does it have any chance of happening? Queen of Pentacles - yes - it will be a matter for the longer term for prosecutions to be brought, and they will be brought in less of a climate of fear and hysteria, but they will have to happen as a matter of the affair being brought to a close and a new era opened. A very matter of fact card, suggesting this is not going to be a witch-hunt but a just and fair - and almost bureaucratic - procedure.
Ann Main - VII Swords - she thought she could get away with it. But, sorry, Ann, caught red-handed thieving. A candidate for doing time if ever there was one and if we can get the legal apparatus in place so that all parties and none can be scrutinised by the bench.
Having just seen a humorous steel sign for sale at a stall in Reading's Broad Street Mall, "HM Prison <---> Long Stay Carpark" (borrowed from an American sign no doubt given the format, typeface and layout), there floated to mind a thought - "long stays can be rather expensive - maybe they could put it on expenses". I think I should start carrying my new camera around as this could get quite entertaining.
This is getting too much for party politics and more and more we need an independent commission or convention set up to sort this out once and for all. The Queen cannot do it, except in name only, HM Government is in the thick of it, HM Opposition would like to do it but again is in this too deep for anything else (and I have always been loathe to trust any party politician with reform of the electoral system: all third/fourth/fifth parties would love PR but if they got into government under FPTP, how long would that promise last? About as long as Derek Lewis' whelk stall, quite possibly...) and so...who?
Perhaps we need a Jaruzelski figure, or a Latin American military coup, to sort us all out and engineer a transition to a civilian government. However the thought of Geoff Hoon in sunglasses is enough to make me spill my coffee over my precious laptop, so maybe not. I'd like to write in a bit of a script here - perhaps we could ask the Prime Minister Elect (see my Rotten Borough articles) Michael Howard to take over...perhaps it really is time for, in Led Zeppelin's words, a spring clean for our May queens?
Please. Pretty Please. Pretty Please With Sugar On Top.
