Kantometer Overload

"We, like Labour politicians, have fought shy of using the "c" word" George Osborne

You'd have thought, somewhere along the line, somebody would have said, "this is our chance to prove we've changed, prove we've learned our lessons". In the past six weeks we've heard promises of little else from Her Majesty's Government and Parliament.

You'd have thought they'd have realised there's a benchmark in place. The public was always going to be able to compare The Telegraph's information on expenses to Parliament's published response. The difference between the two is the measure of Parliamentary intent for transparency and accountability.

You'd be hard-pressed to find circumstances where Parliament was under greater obligation to address their failings or had a better opportunity to show good faith and have fallen so miserably short. Actually, that's not strictly true.

The end of John Major's government imploding in sleaze saw promises of reform with the Nolan report and implementation of numerous commissioners, codes of conduct and no less than 3 offices charged with the task of maintaining standards.

That was over a decade ago.

A month ago, Justice Minister Shahid Malik stepped down whilst Brown instigated an "independent" investigation into his expense claims. Last week Brown announced Malik was cleared but refused to publish the details (subsequently forced to publish in "redacted' form - Ed).

This week Brown announced the latest "independent" Iraq enquiry is to be held in private.

And yesterday, the much heralded "first step towards reform" - transparency for expenses, shows it's face...

What a bunch of Kants.