I'm soooooooo sorrrreeeeee-ee-eee-eeee

Extraordinary. It's taken four months, trawls through private diaries, police records, security records, repeated complaints to Parliamentary commissioners and endless requests for information to establish the pathetically obvious...

1) Jacqui Smith's main home is where she lives with her family in Redditch
2) The room she stayed in at her sister's London flat is not her main home.

Ms Smith says the arrangements were the best way for her to deliver value to her constituents and taxpayers... errrr... that would be true if she hadn't pretended the family home was her second home and then claimed expenses on it. She didn't.

That would also be true if she had only been claiming the minimal expenses for her actual second home.

She wasn't.

Surely someone, somewhere in government is clued up enough to know that compounded by Smith's continued delusional denial, when an investigation like this takes four months, they paint themselves as idiots. Come to think of it, even bothering to order an investigation is a sign you're part of the same delusion.

Having established the truth, the question of paying back the money doesn't seem to have arisen in Parliament, the inquiry or with Ms Smith. She was ordered to stand at the front of the class and say she's sorry. Except it's not really a sorry...

"I accept the committee's conclusions and I therefore apologise to the House." isn't anything like being sorry. Having to be told to say you're sorry isn't anything like admitting guilt, anything like contrition, anything like acknowledging the reason the voter is fecked off with the whole "sorry" expenses scandal and completely sidesteps the real questions...

1) What kind of idiots gave birth to a system that allowed you to pretend a room in your sister's flat is your main residence ?
2) What kind of idiots thought the general public would buy into that system ?

Sadly the answer is "The idiots running our country".