Life can be so unnecessarily hard sometimes. I mean it comes to something when you can't get a few grand of dry cleaning paid for by someone else or a bit of gardening or flat cleaning.
I should imagine there are a few angry people around tonight, feeling let down and cheated. It's not about the humiliation of having to pay money back, it's the principle of it. Heck, the Green Book of expenses codes could not be more clear - claim what you damn well like as it is down to your own idea of what is right. £116,000 is a snip when you think about the value for money we get from politicians. What is so wonderful is that the very people who make the stupid rules by which we have to live, don't like it when they are subjected to it. Try asking the Government to pay your dry cleaning bill or getting tax relief on your handyman. I got a call from HMRC today for being late with just one payment - they threatened legal action if it happened again. I am not kidding - all I did was select the BACS payment to go to the old sort code and account number at HMRC instead of the new one. I am sure Hazel Blears et al have not had similar calls despite their 'oversights'.
Anyway, one thing that has been unanimously applauded up and down the country is that pornography should be tax free. I should think many a lonely sales rep will want to present a few expense claims to HMRC and ask for 'relief'' on what their employer will not reimburse them for. As Jaqui's husband proved, they are essential for doing a good job and stimulating the grey cells.
You have to be some kind of person to be an MP or a Max Mosely. Life occurs to you in a very different slant to normal people. What is abhorrent to most sane, clean living, law abiding, tax paying people is perfectly natural to these people. Then take the Lehmans crew. A mere six European former executives are suing their former employer for £70m of unpaid salaries and bonuses.
The coffee machine is working over time but the aroma is not powerful enough. Hello, the bank is broke thanks to you guys - it was the largest corporate failure in history, thousands unemployed and taxpayers have stepped in to pick up the pieces. And you want money? That takes some front. One of them had only just started work there.
You have to laugh.
Meanwhile in the 'other' world where there are few gardens to charge for keeping, no dry cleaners and precious few meals let alone free ones, there are a few billion people sitting looking on bemused. How can sane people think the way we do? How can we justify going to war to defend this way of life? While millions starve and cry for help, we allow greedy people to take court action to extort money from people - £millions. The last 12 years of false profits and poor governing will be the biggest wasted opportunity in history. All those incredible £trillions could have solved the problems in Africa and the Third World in short order.
You have to cry.
This warped way of life is going too far. One minute banks are broken by their senseless activities, the next they pick up the very things that broke them before and trade them again for vast profits. Toxic debt one minute, perfumed profit the next. Profit from transactions that do nothing for anybody but the people who trade them. In Africa, it would be the same as creating grain from dry sand. They would be that rich if they could do it. They could eat.
One thing that has come out of the last two years is that for all our posturing as a civilised society, we are just a bunch of greedy, moral-less self interested and egotistical jerks - every last one of us. Africa can have what they want so long as we have our 42" inch TV, takeaway curry and a dream of a Porsche. They dream of survival.
For the bemused millions struggling to live, they must look upon us all as gorillas in a zoo. All muscle, hair, wind, chest beating and bullying - we are always right, we always get our own way and we get all the best things. And if we don't, we just fight.
One thing is for sure, we have the monopoly on bananas.
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