Parliamentary Self Regulation a Blinding Success !!!

Quick update on that stalwart of our Parliamentary Democracy - the notion of self-regulation.

Every Parliamentarian we've interviewed to-date has argued MPs are accountable to the public between general elections via the various independent committees and commissioners that police them.

We've had problems with this concept all along, for two reasons (last week gave us a third).

1) The people give their sovereignty to MPs. MPs represent us. They're obligation to be honest is to us . If they deliberately misrepresent the facts, make misleading statements....tell lies. They're doing it in our name. We should have some direct legal means of redress to hold them swiftly to account.

2) How can we possibly have confidence in a self-regulatary process that allows the accused to be tried by their colleagues, their peers.

and now... "Cash For Dinners"

We're in the ridiculous situation where two members of the investigative body stand accused and have to be investigated by their own committee - Sir George Young MP is the Chairman for Chrisssakes !!. Those accused have had to stand down from the investigation. They're both Conservative, leaving a massively one-sided committee which is supposed to be cross party/apoltical to rule on the outcome.

Self-regulation is in a no-win situation.

If the committee finds them guilty, there'll be shouts of "foul play" - a politically biased judgement.

A "Not guilty" verdict and see 2) above - we're back to "how convenient, a bunch of MPs find some other MPs innocent".

Incidentally - Cameron's one of the 19 Tory MPs accused. His (current) defence is that the rules weren't clear. So he consulted them ? Really ? Surely if they weren't clear, you'd ask for clarification ?

Rules aside, does he actually think the taxpayer should foot the bill for his party to hold fund-raising dinners ?