Mrs L is a teacher. If she is reading this then yes, I know, you’ve given up teaching for now but your principles hold dear, dear. She says: “I would never take a pencil nor an exercise book for my own use because I know I’m taking that resource from the kids!” It’s easy to see how an employee can cross a gross misconduct threshold by being over generous in his interpretation of what constitutes a legitimate business expense but I know of few employers that would not implement some sort of expense audit, as a deterrent if not prudent cost control. Because it’s so much harder now, expense fiddlers deserve all they get!

But what sanctions really exist for these MPs!? I’ll wait until the cheque waving dies down and see. Mrs L’s pencil analogy has more poke here because the cost of moat-dredging and home-flipping probably does mean fewer hospital beds and fewer teachers, …

I agree MPs are out of touch but there is no excuse for them being out of common and moral sense.