Yes ... you can

There is a moment when you have to laugh or take a cricket bat to their collective heads. The early publication of MPs expenses has shown what many people suspected - that the political class is bankrupt. Not in the economic sense, that's the taxpayers' problem, but in the moral sense. No one broke the rules, but nobody did what was right.

I wasn't going to bother putting anything up about this, it was just too depressing. But then having seen politicians go from evasion, through denial and on to abject apology mode, I found my blood begining to boil. There was Hazel Blears waving a cheque for over £13,000 about promising to pay to the Inland Revenue the equivalnet capital gains tax that she would have had to pay as a mere mortal. Suddenly all is supposed to be ok, we were wrong, we were caught, we'll pay the fine. But it's not that easy for the rest of us saddled with personal debt and trapped in a severely depressed economy. We cannot just write a cheque to make everything all right. Yes ... you can Hazel. Most of the country cannot.

Finbarr