What is it about Hazel in particular? She is so loathed…

As George says… Just what exactly do you stand for, Hazel Blears - except election? (via Imran).

Which made me look at my local MP, Hugh Bayley and see what he stands for too. It seems he was pro-Iraq war and is pro identity cards and he hardly ever rebels against their party in this parliament.  Marvellous.  Don’t think he’ll get my vote ever again.

I think there’s an extra well of dirt lurking his (and other MP’s) figures to do with how many times he has voted (only 65% of the time) vs. his travel expenses too.It only needs someone with more brain cells in the maths department than me (Tony Hirst are you listening) to find a way to visualise voting record against distance against amounts claimed for travel.

The thing that keeps re-surfacing in my mind about all this expenses furore is that before, when you could claim for biscuits, duck houses and moat-cleaning - who benefited most? And that of course would be the shady un-named figures who knew what you claimed for. This information would be extremely valuable in times of politcal need.

It’s very easy to imagine a situation, where, needing your vote the “powers that be” would be able to simply call you and make quacking noises, saying “imagine if this was leaked” and you’d be snookered. And, because government isn’t transparent you wouldn’t know if duck houses were a regular expense anyway. Duck houses (and the rest, including travel expenses) was a secret between you and the lovely powers that be that could be regularly mined for persuasive reasons.

And of course, if duck houses, can be used to effectively “tell an MP what to do” then who would be the people who would most want to promote your duck house fetish? It’s them again… the powers that be. Them powers that be get everywhere don’t they?

I wonder exactly how and why so many MPs were so easily suckered. I’d also like Tony to have a go at making an “out of touch with the people” quotient - but for now we can just use their expenses claims.

So, whilst we’re all having fun watching career politicians drop like flies, for me the cost of duck house (apart from being the best metaphor imaginable) is just the tip of an iceberg made of shit (which is a much cruder metaphor) where power gets what it wants simply because idiot MPs are naive, greedy and … twats.