Snouts in the trough

Despite all the news on politicians with their snouts in the trough, i'd like to call for a return to the principle of innocent until proven guilty. We don't know which family members were working, people are just speculating that some were being paid for doing nothing. The Mps haven't helped their case by being happy to have seemingly limitless expenses with a receipt required only for items over £250.

MPs seem to be digging themselves into a deeper and deeper hole over sleaze. They have in the past pretended that all is well, but recently so many examples of their greed have come out that they are having an inquiry. The speaker, himself under attack for bias and lack of action on this issue, chose three long standing MPs to investigate MP expenses. They have all been claiming a good living on expenses for many years so the outcome will be a complete surprise.

Is it any wonder that a poll has 73% of the population viewing all politicians as equally sleazy, with 14% thinking Brown's government is more sleazy than the Major government.

So now people associate politicians with sleaze, well done to the large parties for this. However not all politicians do this for their own greed, many are trying to make a diffeence and not just trying to get rich. Unfortunately Tony Blair seems to have chosen the path of greed, and many will follow.

While Mps have remained complacent over the increasing power of the state to spy on us, they are up in arms when they learned that an MP had been bugged. How different is a private conversation between an MP and a suspected terrorist and that same suspect and his lawyer. What about ID cards, CCTVing, DNA swabbing, and database building? Its a bit late to protest this when they only include themselves.