At long last Michael Martin bowed to pressure from within Parliament to resign his post as House of Commons speaker yesterday, a word in the ear from PM Gordon Brown seemingly bringing the speaker to his senses, but there is absolutely no chance that the scandal raised over MPs expenses will go away.
Quite rightly, the government has called for a total reform of the system and so ending the ‘gentlemens club’ that currently exists among it’s members. The tax paying public will demand complete transparency in any reform and the PM owes it to all of us to put his money where is mouth is and restore some respectability with a fresh and transparent set of rules regarding the controversial expenses allowance made available to MP’s.
Martin’s use of tax payers money in seeking legal advice when attempting to keep MP’s expenses from being made available to the public is nothing less than shameful and inexcusable. Now we have come this far and brought the controversy out into the open, Gordon Brown has the opportunity to do something right, by offering a government that operates within the rules and where everything is above board and available to public scrutiny.
He has a chance to redeem himself, by introducing honesty and integrity to politics and he should embrace that opportunity now. Sadly it will not happen, Gordon Brown like many politicians is too interested in himself to notice what a mess he has created.
1 comment so far
1 Kalvis Jansons // May 20, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Do you think it is time that Brown stepped down?
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/please-go/