The expenses scandal scandal

So it makes complete sense, of course, that the first post on a blog intended to be about finance should be entirely about politics.

Of course it does have some meaning to the City. Before the public had realised they were bored of villifying bankers left, right and centre, the Daily Telegraph presented them with a new object for their anger.

At least those working in the City had not been trying to rip off the taxpayer, but here we have a bunch of people we already knew were crooks, acting even more like crooks. Its the perfect headline:

We confirm what you already knew

Until of course we look at some of this in detail. Yes, the Conservatives have been shown to still have many remnants of the snooty party that had no link to the real world that most like to think of it as. But, when we analyse some of these claims in detail we have to realise that it has not been worth day after day of front page headline and TV time. Take today's "relevation", Alastair Darling claimed for the service bill at the flat he was living in, which is paid 6 months in advance. 2 months later he got a promotion and so the remaining 4 months he wasn't living in the flat.

We are outraged! How dare he not predict that he would land such an awful job?! What about rational expectations? Surely he had taken this into account when he calculated his permanent income (I felt we were lacking on some economics)? Or maybe he is very smart, realised he would have to pay back the service charge and thus that his permanent income was unchanged.

Did the company he was renting from pay him back his service charge? I doubt it, so why should he have to? What's more, how is such a tiny some of money worthy of front page news? Speak to people from nearly any other country and they'll tell you they think this entire tribulation is hilarious, then wish that they lived in a country where this was the worst thing we can find to be outraged about. Let's put this into perspective; its £700. He did nothing wrong.

So, imagine my shock to find a Liberal Democrat MP on my television screen saying that Darling should lose his job. Edmund Blackadder himself couldn't have come up with a better plot to get him out of power. Poor old Darling has been left to deal with the consequences of Gordon Brown's profligacy, the last thing we should be doing is distracting with him with useless stuff like this. If he gets anymore stressed his eyebrows might start going grey too.

It is undeniable that the House of Commons needs reform, that's been acknowledged since before this scandal. This really isn't the time to be making rash, appeasing decisions while people are in a state of perma-outrage. The sensible ideas are the smaller ones being thrown around, independent audit of expenses and a look at what is fair to be claimed and what isn't. This could be instituted quickly, easily and with minimal fuss.

More and more, the true villains in this story are the press, especially the Daily Telegraph. Newspapers, and the press in general, have a crucial role to play in informing the public, who based on this information become informed and can hold their government to account. Sensationalist reporting might be what is needed to sell broadsheets nowadays but it is abusing their responsibilities as journalists. Of course its right that we are told when our representatives have acted wrongly, but let's be sure they actually have and not desperately scraping the barrel just to try and keep a story going.

One of the biggest losers in this will be the European elections. I'll cover this more next time but its safe to say that the one issue people won't be voting on is Europe.