In all the continuing public and media revulsion over our MPs’ expenses, one newspaper columnist wrote this nonsense in today’s Guardian defending them.

Joan Smith whines on about how politicians have been treated in this crisis. Claiming to ‘have a partner and friends who are MPs’, she said:

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re a minor television celebrity, a former glamour model or a politician; anyone who ventures into public life may find themselves the target of a degree of vitriol disproportionate to any offence they have deemed to have caused. Now it is happening to MPs and the degree of loathing is the same whether there is evidence of fraud or the person concerned has merely used (as even David Cameron has done) a now discredited expenses system.”

She then witters on:

“The British public- not all of them, but the smug guardians of morality who are enjoying this crisis so much- say they are disgusted by the behavour of our elected representatives. Let me say that it works both ways: for the first time in my life I am sick of my country. I am sick of the daily undermining of democracy, and sick of the sadistic pleasure people take in humiliating decent public servants…”

Many of us have always been suspicious of our politicians. The expenses revelations confirms the well-worn perception that Britain is being  governed by ‘a corrupt political class’. Ms Smith and her colleagues may hate the idea of having the House of Commons filled with ‘celebrities, obsessives who hate the EU for everything, and members of the BNP‘, but at least we, the people, would get the sort of Parliament we want…if we’re prepared to vote for it.

It’s such a shame that a journalist of her standing stoops to have written such sanctimonious nonsense as she does there.

The civil servant who helped leak the MPs expenses to the press said that he didn’t have any regrets about releasing the information.

John Wick had also told the BBC that after the revelations, ‘Parliament will be a better place, society will be a better place’. I’m not so sure about this.

Meanwhile, one Conservative MP warned that the ‘McCarthyite witch-hunt‘ of Parliament’ may drive some to ‘crack under the strain‘. Are you having a laugh?

Elsewhere, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said: ‘The continuing systematic humiliation of politicians itself threatens to carry a heavy price in terms of  our ability to salvage some confidence in our democracy’. Look, why is an unelected person defending our crooked MPs?

Piecemeal reform is not enough. Nothing short of a wholesale clearout of Parliament is needed to restore public faith in our flagging democracy.

Every election time, commentators and political activists constantly warn of the threat of one party being on a verge of a breakthrough… that party being, of course, the British National Party.

What is it about the BNP which brings out anger and delight in equal measure? Maybe it is because, unlike the mainstream parties, they actually  do speak their minds on major issues affecting the country today, which makes them in their eyes, ‘controversial’.

Despite being a democracy, this country wants to ban them from either attending public functions or holding protest marches in major cities, of which being a legitimate political party, has a right. Okay, so many of their members  have criminal convictions, but there are far more criminals in among the 646 Members of Parliament who are supposed to be representing the people.

Despite winning scores of council seats (mostly from Labour), and getting huge support, over the last few years, many commentators still routinely ignore and dismiss the BNP at every opportunity. Yes, that’s right, those same commentators who failed to take on the Labour government over their conduct on the Iraq war, the curtailment of civil liberties, the Gurkhas, and so on.

Despite the fact that a majority of British people support their policies, it didn’t in the past mean that it would get them a lot of votes. But in this anti-political and anti-Westminster public mood, it seems almost inevitable that they may, after the European elections, get the major breakthrough they crave.