...and in other stories, Bernard Jenkin, Paul Goggins and Caroline Flint's attempt to salvage Hazel Blears for posterity's sake.
Andrew is a local MP - I've written about him passim so no poison pen letter today - but John Redwood is in the Wokingham Times over £3,000 worth of redecorating that was claimed for twice - and repaid at the time. Not going to get savage with Redders, he is someone who has helped me in the past get a foot on the next rung of parliamentary life, but for him the X Pentacles, reversed suggests that this could be damaging to him in the future as well as having damaged him now and, financially at least, in the past. I had thought that local MPs - with the exception of Mackay in Bracknell - were squeaky clean but the ooze is spreading :(, with James Arbuthnot in trouble in North Hampshire and Michael Ancram the next-but-one westward (after Richard Benyon in Newbury, who is so posh he doesn't need expenses, though I haven't heard anything and am awaiting with trepidation, again because I owe him a lot - and he me - from 2005) is deep in trouble. I find myself in difficulty as a lot of local MPs - and no doubt a lot of MPs in general - are decent people but the problem is that (a) the local miscreants are all bar none Tory, and for me wanting a reason to vote for them that's a big problem, and (b) although I still feel I would like a Westminster career - and Owlperson repeatedly tells me its on my cards, so to speak (King of Swords, reversed - I am not at the moment able to make that decision and not at the moment able to fulfil even my journalistic potential, but there is potential at least there) - I am more and more at a loss what to predict as the outcome of this scandal and whether or not the Tory/Labour divide will still exist in its current form afterwards.
On the other hand, Owlperson says and says again he has told me that although it changes and evolves, the political structure itself is salvageable, that unexpected people will rise to the challenge of repairing it (there will be a little bit of "back to the future" involved) and that although current personnel are heading for a mass cull, the party system will survive intact and that the Indepedents' campaign (IX Swords) is doomed to failure because people feel they still need a coherent party system and that all it must involve is a judgement on the people making the headlines, not the basic structure to our democracy.
Meanwhile, in other news, Rowan Williams is under fire from his fellow churchmen. Again, a fulfilment of the Nine of Swords which I pulled last night for Rowan, and perhaps a warning to him that he has once again misjudged the public - and ecclesiastic - mood.
