Expenses, excuses and greed...

Expenses, excuses and greed. Having watched and listened to the media reports of the MPs expenses scandal for a few days now, I'm now resigned to condemning those MPs who have claimed anything and everything that as a taxpayer I find unacceptable. A few months ago, the Observer ran a story about an 85 year old lady called Winifred Nunn, who had used her life savings to start to pay for her husband's funeral. To help pay the rest, she had put in a request for funds from the DSS Social Fund funeral grant scheme and had been waiting and waiting. Days turned into weeks and weeks are now becoming months, but she has not received a penny. Meanwhile MPs and government ministers where claiming for anything and everything using the excuse of "it is in the rules".

A few weeks ago, Evelyn McCarroll, 58 of Gravesend was fighting for her life and with her local PCT, West Kent Primary Care Trust to overturn a ruling that they would not pay for £1700 per month cancer drug which her doctor stated would prolong her life. As a result her family had to fund the crippling cost of £1700 a month drug Tarceva.

Tonight I sat and watched as Chris Huhne MP justified claiming for a trouser press. To be fair to him, he needs it for his job to look smart, after-all we all claim from our company expenses or the DSS for a trouser press to look smart at work and in the interview room, don't we?

It is truly a scandal on an unprecedented scale. Sixty-four years after Victory in Europe was declared, politicians should be fighting not for every penny they can squeeze out of the taxpayer, but against the fascists who will inevitably gain votes from the main parties who have failed us all so badly.

Am I angry, absolutely. Every week people get diagnosed with cancer and have to face life changing pressures along with bleak financial futures. Everyday people wake-up not on a John Lewis mattress covered in £500 bedding, but on the cold and often wet pavement, as they have no home, let alone a second or third home. And everyday someone, somewhere has to choose between eating or paying their utility bills, unable to claim a £400 per month food allowance or second home utility bills.

This scandal has gone too far to be simply fixed with gestures, far too late in the day. The public want blood; I want remorse and a system where MPs found fiddling or flipping, claiming excessively or engaged in fraud are subject to the same penalties the poor and rich alike in society face.

If there is a shred of decency and integrity left in Parliament, then resignations should follow. Otherwise, deselections must be used to set an example that MPs and members of the House of Lords are not above the law or worth more than the people who vote for them.

Finally, as Luton has demonstrated, there are MPs who are not feeding from the trough or catching the gravy train. The media should also alert the public to the names of these parliamentarians, so as voters we can make informed judgements when we cast our vote in the ballot box.