After weeks of suffering the drip, drip, drip of damaging revelations, like Chinese water torture (as opposed to our type of water torture), the expenses claims of the rich and shameless have been released in full. Drawing a line under the seemingly endless outpouring of public fury, the full and frank disclosure of each and every item bought at the public expense has been published with the complete co-operation of every member of Parliament including the Prime Minister himself who declared that he was in favour of openness and transparency. It’s the way he tells ‘em!
The lesson of history is that no-one ever learns anything from history, but to ignore something that’s happening right now takes a special kind of dismissive arrogance and we’ve found the source of that right under the tower of Big Ben. Like 630 monkeys with their fingers in their ears, their hands over their eyes and a censor’s stamp covering their mouths, they put out a report on their expenses with vast chunks blacked out as though we hadn’t read it all, uncensored in the papers every day for the last month. Do they get the Telegraph in the subsidised shop in Westminster or do they stick solely to fiction? Just when you thought that their public profile couldn’t sink any further they find a new hole to dig themselves into.
But not in the future. No longer will we suffer the indignity of having the British political class ridiculed the whole world over because of the grasping venality of their expenses fiddles. They see the problem and understand instinctively what they must do: they must prevent the public from ever finding out about their multifarious finagling again and so, back dated to April this year, any further expenses details will be less transparent, more general and less detailed. Problem solved. Carry on as you were. It’ll be all there in black and white. But mostly black.