Spiral Notebook: You've been framed

Giles Broadbent considers a radical, punitive imposition on errant MPs

I make no apology for returning to the subject of MPs' expenses. I make no apology because it is fully within the rules as laid down in the Columnist's Green Book and it is the system that stinks, not I. Reform cannot come soon enough.

In pursuit of redress, and never one to decline the fruits of another man's labours, my thoughts turned to the Window Tax of 1696. We should reintroduce this much-maligned imposition forthwith.

The new Window Tax 2009 would stipulate that MPs must pay the price of all broken windows in any chamber, constituency residence, tavern or town hall even if they are not directly to blame for being flung through them in the first place.

(Incidentally, the Window Tax was not repealed until 1851 when it was replaced by the "House Duty", a form of words that whooshes straight over the heads of our elected embezzlers like a hungry wig hawk scouting for supper.)

In the doldrums

• I fear for the future. In years to come, all ambition will be spent. Look at the milestones passed in recent months - the first Speaker ousted since 1695; the deepest recession in a century; the first Lords kicked out of Parliament since Oliver Cromwell; the biggest constitutional crisis since the MP for Berwick on Tweed in 1745 knotted his brow with a reef rather than the more traditional Gordian knot.

What will we pitch for when all is said and done and stolen and claimed for and reimbursed and repaid in sorrow?

In 10 years' time - new government, settled house prices, recession ended - we'll be as dull and lifeless as the barnet of a slumdog crack addict.

We'll turn our faces to the skies in the hope that climate change will bring us, say, the worst hurricane, the biggest snowfall, the loss of Norfolk. Anything to lift us from our middle-ranking, unremarkable malaise of historical mediocrity.

I still thrill to the sound of a newsreader concluding her statistical analysis with "...since records began".

Dear Diary, I was there when that terrible thing happened. I witnessed history.

Come 2019 we'll be edging through Canary Wharf on Crossrail and the holographic figure of a stately Emily Maitless will echo from the depths of our iLatte™ "...and those are the worst figures..." and we'll perk up before she continues... "since the Great Superlatives Flood of 2009" and we'll sit back and sigh.

We're standing on the shoulders of pygmies, we'll think, secretly yearning for the return of City excesses, free fluffy dusters and a bent peer or two.

– First published in The Wharf, May 21

Spiral Notebook: Life of shame

Politicians have always had a rough time. We always knew many of their number were power-hungry hucksters who swayed in the breeze of opinion, dumping principles like so many stained mattresses in a woodland car park.

But we sorely misjudged them. We thought nothing could top their blinkered ambition. We were wrong. Turns out greed is the trump card.

They would lie, cheat, schmooze, dissemble to get more turf and a good Whitehall berth - then happily risk it all to blag some bootleg beans or underwrite a wide-screen or snaffle a pair of jaunty slacks.

If Parliament introduced a no-child allowance today, by tomorrow you'd see a zombie-wave of crumpled children drifting across Westminster bridge, each bearing a battered suitcase and a label on their duffel coats - Please Look After This Drain.

Meanwhile Daddy would be gorging on the porridge and truffles, his jowls wibble-wobbling with glee, his black pudding of a heart on a side plate, his conscience withered at his feet like a crumpled sock.

We now know that too many MPs cannot recognise the difference between rules and moral obligations. They cannot distinguish between "must not" and "should not". They have no shame.

So when they artlessly ask for your biometric details, your salary, your vote, your trust, a CCTV on your bedpost, the weight of your wheelie bin and a green tax for da lickle Polar Bears we can no longer say: what harm can come of this?

Because now we know. We know of their ways. Their snorting, venal, phlegm-flecked, elbows-out, Harrods-sale, clamber-over-the-bodies-of- the-dead rush for the gullet-stuffing foie gras of unrestrained engorgement.

Not, what value has this? But, what's in it for me?

You'll be duped, skimmed, flogged, sold to the highest bidder, stripped clean like lead on a church roof, used as collateral in a scam to Artex the privy of a long-dead auntie in a "second home".

You'll be sorted, sliced, cut with Ajax and palmed on the street corner to any hollow-eyed junkie with the readies.

It's like giving your Pin number to the bloke fixing your drive; or matches to a nine-year-old; or a razor to a toddler. It's not what they're going to do that terrifies you - because calamity is a given.

It's trying to fathom what they wouldn't do that foments a sweat in the dark of a godless night.

– First published in The Wharf on May 14