So some MPs are revealed as greedy looters. Does this matter?
It depends on what beliefs you already held about them. The scale of current public disenchantment is perhaps best explained by a previously prevailing belief among the politically ignorant that their representatives were persons of integrity.
Having watched the long shabby spectacle of New Labour war-mongering and money-licking, the pandering to the Editor of the Daily Mail, the whole ghastly shower of yes-boys and yes-girls grinning and nodding, I suffered no sudden loss of innocence.

We have been poorly served by the Telegraph’s revelations and manipulations. Led by the Telegraph, distinctions are being made between Utter Rotters, Minor Offenders, and Clean Hands which are often quite invalid.

Have Members of Parliament heard of inflation? Do they know that the Bank of England is given by the Government a ‘symmetrical’ target for inflation of 2 ½% (before Brown’s Economic Disaster, at least)?
Members of Parliament have devised for themselves a system of expenses reimbursement which provides for the payment of interest (only) on mortgages. Nominal interest is paid.

A tramp asks you for five pounds. You don’t want to give him money that he might spend on drink, so you take him to the cafe and buy him a plate of food. Another tramp asks me for five pounds. I give it to him: and watch him go into the off-license and spend it on cider.

Here is a puzzler. Many of us are not the owners of inherited fortunes so large that we have no financial need to work. Nevertheless we can, even from the poverty of our own circumstances, see that the prudent thing to do with any spare cash is to pay down debt before making new investments. Unless you seek ‘gearing’, that is borrow money at a relatively low rate and sink it into some speculative venture which will earn you more than you are paying to your lender. Most such chancers are now bust, or have bankrupted their lenders, or both. ‘Gearing’ we can leave aside.