Notes on Moats

So, "honourable" members of all parties have been on the fiddle, much as journalists, bankers, writers, lawyers and pretty much all the rest of us have done on occasion. The point, that MPs hardly have a monopoly on low-level cheating, was made last week by Stephen Fry in a Newsnight interview. This is very true, but, for me, is wide of the mark. MPs' gaming of expenses is quite different from that perpetrated by the above for one reason: the money is ours.

I really, really don't want to come over all Taxpayers' Alliance on you, but the fact remains that nobody volunteered their money to HMRC (even if some/most of them tacitly approved), so we're entitled to some say on, or at least interest in, what happens to it. Regrettably, I don't own a newspaper, so I'm not entitled to fuss about journalists' expenses claims in the same way. Those claiming public money are manifestly distinct from those on private teats, about whom I don't give a shit, basically. MPs are paid for by us and, therefore, are answerable to us. I simply demand a moat in compensation.