Dear oh dear oh dear. Caught with their hands in the sweet jar again.
Non UK readers deserve a quick explanation. Under some rather new legislation called the Freedom of Information Act, government authorities were asked to reveal MPs’ (Members of Parliament) expense reports. They cried and they kicked and they clawed, but eventually, they had to shamefacedly show what they had in their sticky hands. It turns out that many MPs, under the pretext of remaining ‘within the rules’ (… a recurring leitmotif of this saga) had been claiming for rather more than they were strictly entitled to. Rather more than could decently be described as wholly and necessarily part of the job. Things like chandeliers, repairs to a moat, and refunds of mortgage payments that never existed. That kind of thing.
Naturally, in the middle of a recession, Joe Public isn’t too happy about all this, and ordinary peoples’ opinions of politicians (never high) has sunk to an all-time low. It’s been horrifying to see slimeballs squirming under interview as they attempt to explain that their recent discovery of an ‘administrative error’ – sometimes resulting in a repayment of taxpayers’ money – had nothing to do with the potential disclosure of their claim in the UK media. For others, chanting ‘It was all within the rules’ seemed to offer some succour. Poor things.
‘It was all within the rules’ is not a million miles away from ‘I was only following orders’ … and we know what lies at the end of that particular idealogical cul-de-sac.