Whingeing MPs deserve a bloody good kicking

I really cannot believe that some MPs are stupid enough to want to inflame this whole expense mess again. Thank goodness that Sir Thomas Legg has come in as an independent person and made a call - quite briskly for the size of the task involved. If MPs now start carping on about moving goalposts, they will just reignite the near-revolutionary public anger wave which consumed us all for about two months before the summer. The fact is that the implementation of Commons rules were corrupt, as I said at the time. - A systemic conspiracy of nods, winks and unspoken "if you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" which had allowed an illegitimate source of untaxed perks for MPs for many years.

Legge has come in and made a call based on how the real world operates. He has based his calls on the very rules the MPs were supposed to be obeying all along: Expenses should only be paid when "wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred for the purposes of carrying out their duties as an MP." The whole point of having an independent person making a review is that not everyone is going to like all the conclusions. Tough. The alternative is going back to rules essentially written and administered by the MPs themselves and risk a revolution.

MPs who start whingeing about Legge's judgments really do deserve a bloody good kicking.