Fraudulence, theft and malfeasance
Now you could be forgiven for thinking they're just taking the p***: £16,000 of our money for a mortgage that did not exist (); today we've learned about a new practice, called "double-dipping", where by a married Parliamentary couple, each claims the other's second residence as their main home (); Tony Blair's expenses claims, covering his lucrative housing deals, "accidentally" shredded.
No wonder the air is now thick with cries of fraudulence, theft and malfeasance, as opposed to old-fashioned fiddling. There is a growing demand that Knacker of the Yard be called in and the handcuffs slapped on the worst miscreants. It make take that to assuage public anger -- and even that might not be enough.
In America, they're pretty good at throwing public figures in the slammer for wrongdoing, whether on Wall Street or Capitol Hill. In Britain, our more cosy establishment is understandably not so keen on that remedy.
But some of the fiddles are so egregious and the public so outraged that it is fast becoming an option.
In another regard, however, we might be about to go in the opposite direction. It has long been a feature of American politics that it is hard to defeat an incumbent, whether a senator or congressman. Incumbents tend to win over 90% of elections because they have the resources and the name recognition, both vital for winning in expensive TV campaigns. Britain's next general election, however, might be an anti-incumbent whirlwind.
Of course many MPs with embarrassing expense claims to explain might simply throw the towel in and not run again. Those that do stand for re-election could face the wrath of the electorate. "Throw the bastards out!" has always been a powerful populist rallying call and MPs on both sides of the House could feel its full force come the next general election hustings. The most outraged voters might already be stocking up on Kit Kats and Jaffa Cakes to hurl at those seeking election. The upshot could be the biggest clear out of the Commons in modern times.
More information is coming out in Westminster, by the way, about the scale of the Telegraph's amazing scoop. Seems like the paper has more than just a few discs but has the complete hard drive of all MPs expenses, consisting of over 2m PDFs of their claims, complete with their comments and sticky notes saying why they should be paid.
All this data was stored in a hard drive in the Commons Fees' Office which processes MPs claims. Word is that somebody with access to the Fees office downloaded the hard drive on to another hard drive then touted it around Fleet Street (the is nominally in charge of the Fees office, which explains why he's so grumpy about the whole mess). I understand it involved up to a terabyte of data, which would take some time to download. Must have been like a scene from 24, though we might never know who was in the . 
There's much hurrumphing in parts of Fleet Street about the having bought stolen goods.
To that, of course, it has a public interest defence and I doubt any jury would think otherwise.
And every other Fleet Street editor who turned this data down must now be hanging their heads in shame and despair.
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