About That Matter In Hand

David Osler ruminated on his always highly readable blog this Sunday just gone about the affair surrounding the husband of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith ordering two porn films on cable & the fact that the £10 cost for the films formed part of her MP expenses claim (http://www.davidosler.com/2009/03/expense_account_porno_flicks_j.html#comments ).
Aside from the low humour generated by the affair & the relish with which this latest New Labour-related piece of schadenfreude was greeted (one of my acquintances recited a whole list of websites where said dubious delights could be accessed free of charge -- &, after careful consideration, I've decided not to link to them), it seems to say so much about the putrid mess that Labour has long been. This isn't a moralistic observation about the onanistic preferences of Ms Smith's spouse (entirely his own business), it is a more ethically centred take; expense fiddling is just that, whether the scam involves the drinks bar at a five-star hotel, or a couple of skin-flicks. The most objectionable aspect of the tawdry saga isn't what he watched, it is the fact that he expected the rest of us to pay for it.
Osler muses in the closing paragraph to his post:
"Meanwhile, I can't help thinking that the old Militant Tendency slogan of 'a worker's MP on a worker's wage' could profitably be resurrected. It's not as if they need £150,000 a year or so to function as part of the political system, is it?"
Terry Fields would have denounced all involved with magnificently withering scorn.....& then mischievously speculated on the viewing habits of other (male) New Labour MPs.