Right Wing Nutters No. 2 - How Out of Touch?

The target of political ire today is the tory MP for Totnes in Devon who i heard interviewed on Radio 4 this lunchtime. He's standing down at the next election after using the allowance for MP's second homes - originally designed to allow MPs to have a residence in London as well as their constituency and thereby be able to attend parliament - to claim £87,000 of taxpayers money to maintain his country mansion in his constituency.

He may not be the worst offender in the whole expenses debacle, but he incited my anger by the attitude he displayed in the interview. First he maintained he had behaved impeccably throughout and had done nothing wrong, nor anything to be ashamed of. Then he launched a stinging attack on the government (no surprises there), but not for their own expenses abuses or their mismanagement of the whole affair, but for introducing the freedom of information law which makes these details open to the public.

You see the problem is not that MPs have been abusing the spirit (if not the letter) of the law to claim far more of the taxpayer's money than they should be and that this has been going on for years. No the problem is actually that now the public are finding out how their money is being spent and this constitutes an unwarranted invasion of MP's privacy!

As a side note - if the number of MPs who claim to have made an honest mistake claiming for the wrong mortgage or a mortgage that's been paid off really have made an honest mistake, then we must have the dumbest bunch of elected officials this side of the Atlantic.