Alan Duncan on half rations!

Alan Duncan has paid the price - half his rations taken away. David Cameron had his summer holidays to contend with before he decided what to do with the shadow leader of the House. The press think he has been demoted, Duncan thinks it is all very fine and large, we don't really know what David Cameron thinks and the public have more to get worked up about.

This expenses fall-out will carry on right up to the general election. Who is sleazier that who and who is more saintly than the next will be the issue that floats in and out to derail all the proper stuff about the economy and the rest of the government's record.

The voters have not given their memories a makeover yet it seems.

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Sir Patrick Cormack comes to the point!

Whilst the Daily Mail keeps the kettles and coffee pots at raging boiling point in the serenity of surburbia, with its moral outrage at MPs expenses (they didn't get the scoop!), it is up to MPs to defend us against our democracy becoming a political forum for the wrong sort.

Sir Patrick Cormack rightly says, in defending Alan Duncan's central message, "We don't want a parliament of political anoraks and rich people. Those who have a vocation for public life shouldn't be deterred from going into parliament because they can't afford to contemplate it. Being an MP is an extremely expensive business." David Cameron, probably sensing that the majority of Conservative MPs and others agree with this, is not going to sack Duncan. It was the secret filming by Heydon Prowse that started this re-ignition of interest in Alan Duncan.

Ask yourselves this question. Do I want Heydon Prowse (pictured) as my next MP? A whole chamber made up of his type and we will all be secretly filmed, told what to do and given our marching orders! Baby out with the bath water, eh? Prowse runs an online business called Don't Panic. Nice title, but I think we should all panic at the very thought of him and democracy mixing.

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Alan Duncan says sorry for something!

Alan Duncan has got himself into a spot of bother. He has been caught out on tape saying some things some people think he ought not to have said. He was heard to say MPs were being treated badly after the expenses scandal and "have to live on rations". David Cameron, his leader, was none too happy.

Whilst I deplored Duncan's original approach to the expenses scandal, I do think he has a point much overlooked by his well-to-do wisteria claiming leader. That is, if MPs are to be just a load of salaried hacks, most of them emanating from behind the desks of quangos, research departments and think tanks, we are all going to be a damn sight worse off. No more farmers, no more business people, no more doctors, scientists or the like. Just professional politicians or those with independent means.

Alan Duncan said, "No one who's done anything in the outside world or is capable of doing such a thing will ever come into this place ever again the way we're going. Basically it has been nationalised. You have to live on rations and you are treated like shit." I think his crime was not that he said it but that he thought it. However, now that he's said it (and it is probably true in large part if everyone was truthful to themselves) only those like the recent winner at Norwich North will want to stay chirpy and chippy and reading from the script.

When I first studied politics, after the 1964 general election, there were all sorts of characters as MPs. Maybe after the next election we will have all sorts of characterless people representing us. I really do hope that that is not the case. Alan Duncan is a character and the sort of MP we need.

As a side issue, the news channels suggested Duncan used foul language. The BBC in particular sounds rather hypocritical. Most programmes get the message before they start - "the following programme contains strong language". In all this expenses business there are far more hypocrites that paragons of virtue!

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