Yes, we know I like a rant but........

[kellys_eye]

Just read this on one of my regular blog sites - thought it deserved a wider audience as it sums up a lot of public feeling (imho)

read the original text, the comments that people have posted and, maybe, have a look at some of the other posts this blogger has made in the fast by clicking on this link

http://raedwald.blogspot.co.uk/

Moral pronouncements by ministers of the crown carry little or no credibility these days, particularly so when the minister in question, David Gauke, is married to a tax-avoidance lawyer and has claimed back £11k in stamp duty on his second home (HT Guido) while also clocking up £120k a year in expenses including travel to his constituency from Westminster. I'll also make a fair guess that Gauke's tax return is a model of maxing-out every single allowable expense, for which he needs large wads of VAT receipts. No wonder he's so in favour of them. Why be restricted, like the little man, to getting back 20% by paying in cash when you can claim 100% with a bit of nous?

Government ministers have destroyed their own moral authority. You can't shove gay weddings and bloody pointless windmills down the public's retching throat and then lecture them about morality; you can't waste their wealth and that of their children and grandchildren on saving your chums in the banks and then lecture them on fiscal responsibility, you can't give the BBC a monopoly of £4bn a year in TV Tax and then condone their arrangements for their richest fat-cats to not pay tax but condemn the poor widow for the tenner paid to her window cleaner, and you can't sell the nation's sovereignty to a faceless supernational power for a mess of pottage and expect people to heed your words. While Blair, Hoon, Irvine and Straw are allowed to walk free in England, while Brown and Balls continue to profit by their malfeasance and while the entire political class is more remote, more separated from the people than ever before you have no firm ground on which to stand and deliver moral pronouncements. Ministers are mired in the ordure of corruption, peculation, patronage and placement, besmirched by deception and mendacity and fouled with the filth of their mutual self-protection at our expense. They have all the moral authority of sewer-rats.

[Laird]

There's truth in these words.
I am still p----d off with the MPs expenses excesses.
They are truly a reprehensible bunch, lacking in any moral authority.

[dandan]

I think the media are largely to blame with issues like this, if it is a slow news week they take a comment (that may have been out of context) and spend a week doing it to death.

Dont get me wrong, I agree with everything above, just think that this issue has blown way out of proportion.

[thescruff]

They all have their snout in the trough and treat the population like pigs. The sooner we get rid of the bleeding crooks from europe and start shaking the system up the better.

[kellys_eye]

The press are PART of the problem if you ask me. Why is it left to bloggers to point out to the public what the press should be pointing out instead? It's because the press are in cahoots with the politicians and vice versa.
Take the Daily Mail for example - constantly slagging off the EU but, in truth, committed to us remaining a part of it.....