This issue reinforces the urgent need for a General Election to allow voters to remove those MPs who have abused the system, put MPs pay and allowances on a new clearer footing so a new Parliament can get on with the job we are elected to do.
The parties are now ready for an election, having set out their stalls at their conferences last month. But I see little prospect of Gordon Brown doing anything other than clinging on to power to the bitter end, likely to be 6th May 2010 to coincide with local elections in the metropolitan Labour heartlands.
So you can look forward to an extended election campaign, with the starting gun having effectively been fired at the party conferences.
I will not dwell on the Labour conference, which by all accounts was pretty grim, with scant acknowledgement by the Prime Minister of the mistakes he has made or the state the country is in. The LibDems' biggest announcement was a new tax on property, criticised by some senior LibDems as 'codswallop'; not surprising as for years they have called to axe property taxes.
By contrast last week showed a Conservative Party united and ready to deliver the bold, tough and radical change Britain needs. We made a start to deal with Labour's Jobs Crisis by publishing detailed plans to Get Britain Working. The election battlelines have been drawn. It will be a long haul to election day - you have been warned !
