Embarrassing Expenses

Members of Parliament ask "doesn't everyone have a moat?"

We've learnt more about MPs' moats, duck islands and their mortgage mix-ups than we can take on board in recent weeks. The MPs' expenses scandal revealed in 'The Telegraph' has seen reader numbers increase ten fold as the paper cleverly kept up the suspense - revealing one scandal a day for a whole week.

In a clear admission of guilt, some MPs offered to give the money back while others tried to justify their shady claims. The really bad ones (see moats, manure and swimming pool cleaning claims) really had no option but to slink away, shamefaced. Reverberations have seen calls for serious constitutional reform and heads are still continuing to roll. In the Conservative party, David Cameron has put guilty members of his party out to dry which, he's quick to point out, only highlights Labour's lack of action.

Even the existence of a 'second homes' allowance is news to me - I was clueless that us tax-payers were paying for MPs to lunch and (lavishly) furnish their second abode. And, on the whole, spending more than the average person to do so - nothing but John Lewis will do, it seems (well, they are 'never knowingly undersold').

London MPs' second homes were particularly problematic. Living close to Westminster, many of the capital's MPs can, arguably, commute from their first home and save tax-payers a ton of money. However, with the lines drawn as they currently are, many of those claiming second homes are perfectly within the rules, highlighting a system that can be 'played' or maximised by MPs with less than scrupulous morals.

Take health minister Ann Keen and her husband Alan, MP for Feltham and Heston - nicknamed Mr and Mrs Expenses. They maxed out the allowances available, buying an apartment on the South Bank while their primary residence lies a mere 30 minutes away by car in Brentford, West London. The Mail worked out that even if they had each separately taken a taxi ride (costing £38) from Westminster to Brentford on every Commons 'sitting day' last year, the bill would have only come to £11,000. This may sound like a lot in cab fares. But not when you consider that this would have saved £27,000 compared to what they claimed in living expenses that year.

Keith Vaz, a former minister who now chairs the home affairs select committee, is another culprit. He reportedly claimed £75,000 for a Westminster flat even though his family's home is just 12 miles away in Stanmore. His defence? It's all permissible within the rules.

Nepotism, too, came under the spotlight as it emerged that a surprising number of MPs - around 200 - employ members of their family to do their menial work at our expense. Sir George Young, MP for North West Hampshire, for example, employs his daughter Camilla is his office manager. And who could forget Derek Conway who was exposed for paying his son Henry to work for him - while he was miles away at university. Henry Conway seems to have done rather well out of this particular scandal - establishing himself as something of a posh boy-party organiser around town.

Others, by contrast, came away looking (or sounding?) squeaky clean - these are the ones who choose not to take the mickey out of a system with so many holes it could be Swiss cheese. David Burrowes, the Conservative MP for Enfield, Southgate, is one example. Being an outer London MP he could claim for second home allowance, but opted not to. "It can’t be justified as a reasonable tax-payers' expense," he reasoned, adding, "and I prefer to go home to my family." Awww.

But the most excruciating performance arising from the expenses debacle came from the Speaker, Michael Martin - no stranger to expenses controversy himself - who stuttered his way through an agonising speech in the Commons. His far more succinct 30-second resignation speech followed soon after.

We're still waiting for the next instalment - what will the next day's newspaper announcements bring? Will Esther Rantzen take over as Speaker; or will Gordon be forced to call an early election? One thing's for certain, we can look forward to radical reforms of the inexcusably easy-to-exploit expenses system.

Taste of London

A greasy spoon is west London is an unlikely addition to the capital's tourist attractions. The Bridge Café stars in 'The Apprentice' as the place where "Britain's best business prospects" (apparently) go for a taste of reality. The message is that if they become the next in line to hear the words "You're Fired!" they could be swapping power lunches with Sir Alan Sugar for bacon butties in Acton! We know where we'd rather be – put the kettle on boys!

Pink and the Mob

Word was out at LondonTown.com Towers that the latest 'flash mob' event (it loses a bit of street cred when it's filmed for a certain mobile phone company advert) was taking place in Trafalgar Square and we deserted our desks in favour of karaoke with a 13,000-strong crowd. Renditions of 'Hey Jude', 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' and 'Summer Nights' filled the air but the element of surprise was US star Pink popping up to do a turn.

Curtain Up and Camera Rolling

It was only a matter of time before the light bulb switched itself on in the minds of telly producers and they realised that reality television had never really gone (literally) backstage at a London theatre. The Royal Ballet famously let the cameras go behind the scenes and many a musical star has been thrown into the spotlight of a West End show in the name of television, but the Theatre Royal Haymarket is the latest subject of fly-on-the-wall documentary. Apparently the show will be focusing on "the fabric and management of the theatre" but we bet they're really hoping to find some skeletons in the props cupboard!

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