Jaqui Does Expenses

Jaqui Smith's marriage is 'strong' - she will not be doing a 'Tessa' and ditching her husband after he was caught viewing porn films. Good for her.

I still think MPs just don't seem to get it. It has nothing to do with porn films, it's about abuse of public funds. The fact that she and her husband, who incidentally 'works' for her according to her expense reports, regularly claim for films watched on TV, porn or not, is the crux of the issue. For most people on business trips, what you do in your private time in your hotel is entirely up to you, just don't expect to expense it, whether it is 'Surf's Up' or 'Debbie does Dallas'. The fact she claims her first residence is a room at her sister's house in London while the family live somewhere else, is just another minor blip.

More Bad News

Over the weekend we got the more revelations of Labour Ministers with their snouts deep in the trough of expenses - this time it was Geoff Hoon who was making sure he 'was ok, Jack' - he of the famous 'they're not alright, Jack' activities which allowed an army he dispatched to Iraq to arrive without the proper equipment, like desert boots.

At least he was cosy and ok in his nice 3 homes.

Geoff is one of those incompetent Politicians who keeps returning like a bad penny in the Mandelson fashion. He, as usual, insists he has done nothing wrong in claiming second home allowances for his family home in Derbyshire while enjoying an apartment in Admiralty House for free while serving time as one of the worst Defence Secretaries in memory - he also was claiming for rent of an apartment in London at the same time.

It isn't that he thinks he has not broken rules - that is not the point. The fact of the matter is that he seems to think from a common sense, decency or moral point of view that it is perfectly fine to have the country pay for 3 homes - 2 of them in London while serving as a paid for Politician.

Hoon and Smith are prime examples of people without the moral fabric and ethics to be in charge of policy making because they are too busy making sure they can bend rules sufficiently enough to make an extra bit of money - that takes a crooked mind to do so and that has no place in Government.

Oh No, It's Darling This Time

And Alistair Darling is at the same game - getting free accommodation at 11 Downing Street, he he is claiming allowances for his home in Edinburgh and his flat in London. You may slightly forgive him that he has been a bit forgetful lately, after all he has just missed another 2.7% of deficit rise he forgot about when he last predicted it. Due to his calculator and memory malfunctions he now estimates that by 2015 our deficit will have grown a further £40bn. He and Gordon Brown have stood Canute-like against the tide of Credit Crunch and Recession shouting things like 'it won't affect us as we have a stable economy' at the start and all the way through denying it will affect us harder than most as the IMF has repeatedly said. Suddenly, Darling has admitted the recession is in fact worse than they had predicted and hence yet more borrowing is required.

I wonder how much this wishful thinking and incompetence we are a) going to put with and b) ultimately cost us?

Having just hosted and attended the successful G20 summit, Brown is revelling in his second stint as 'Superman' but how can all these leaders get the sums right to put us back on track when countries like Britain simply cannot add up their problems properly? It really is a guessing game and it hardly inspires hope and confidence that we will properly address the problems if the underlying accounting is complete rubbish.

For all the good the G20 summit has done in getting a common direction, the actual sums involved are a joke if the constituents are guessing the extent of their problems. But, like expenses, the attention to detail is simply not there or cared about. Saving their political skins and making a few bob on the taxpayer account is number one priority.

Always has been, always will be. We need transparency and people we can trust in power - it's not about docking wages or paying money back, it's about fraud.