Ser­i­ously, both of them are as bad as each other. Lord Foulkes for fail­ing to under­stand the dif­fer­ence between expenses and salary, and the presenter for being rude.

Kudos to Car­rie Gracie for answer­ing the ques­tion though — she could have given a typ­ical politician’s answer and fudged the response.

But you know, MPs (or any­body else for that mat­ter) — when you make an expenses claim that could, poten­tially, come under pub­lic scru­tiny at some point you have to think about how it could look. And if you’re not paid enough, then sort out the pay. But given that each con­stitu­ency man­ages to have lots of applic­ants for the job I sus­pect that the job is seen as a rather attract­ive one. I would be quite happy to receive an MP’s income along with money to pay for an office and staff. Lucky them.

So here’s a gentle nudge to MPs to have a think about how you look to the pub­lic you serve, and the pub­lic who pay your salary. And yes, I do appre­ci­ate that many MPs are decent and hard­work­ing — but they need to be open so we can see this.

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