UK MPs finally released their expenses in response to a court order yesterday - but with crucial details blacked out. The upshot: if we'd been forced to rely on this, and never had the leaked version, we would never have learned about the worst of the scandal - the property flipping, the tax evasion, the outright fraud. As Julian Glover puts it in the Guardian, this is a two-fingered salute to voters, from an arrogant and unaccountable political class which has not learned. And they call this "restoring faith in democracy". Showing that we can have none in them, more like it.
Meanwhile, another Minister has been forced to resign in the last few days after she was revealed to have flipped her place of residence to avoid capital gains tax. And the police are reportedly planning a criminal investigation. I don't expect much from them - the UK police have always been reliable servants of the establishment, willing to overlook wrongdoing from those in positions of power (especially themselves) - but it shows how serious the allegations MPs sought to hide are.
They all need to go. Every last one of them. The entire House of Commons needs to be bulldozed into the Thames, with its occupants inside it. The politicians elected to replace them will no doubt be petty and venal and possibly even corrupt - but at least they won't be these fuckers.
