MPs' Expenses-The Slow Burning Scandal

So it's been disclosed that 30 years ago Mrs Thatcher was aware that there was something dodgy going on with MPs' expenses and that some could end up being prosecuted. Shame it took all this time to eventually get a few of them done. No doubt the Coalition will eventually take credit for cleaning up British politics, which they haven't and never will.

It's amazing how quickly they can up income tax, fuel duty and VAT. Or bring in ever more oppressive 'anti-terror' legislation to nudge us even closer to a police state. It didn't take them long to declare war on Iran and Afghanistan either did it? But clean up their own muck? 30 years for that one, and we still don't know the half of it.

The problem today is that morality has gone from public life. As a nation we have become obsessed with money and trinkets. The Trafford Centre, Brent Cross and Meadowhall are the new cathedrals and computers are the news electronic tags, keeping kids imprisoned in their bedooms for hours on end rather than out playing and socialising with other kids. The world begins and ends with number one.

Community is dying. Neighbours no longer mix socially, the most is a nodded hello as they head to, or home from the office. The local pub, once the centre of the community, is dying or dead. Where are the local community organisations that used to thrive? They now consist, at best, of one or two elderly, hardy stalwarts trying to survive with ever dwindling memberships.

We all know about falling church attendance. Thankfully in the big cities many churches, such as my old church in inner city Manchester, are thriving with full pews thanks to the presence of immigrants from Africa and Eastern Europe. But the rot has set in and contribues to the rotting away of our national fabric.

MPs expenses are a sign that the whole nation is in a sorry state, from the top down, and it has been decaying for many a decade. If anybody thinks that morality is not the main contributory factor we only have to look at the Royal Family, who supposedly give us continuity and stability, to see that dysunctional families with single parents and broken relationships don't only exist on sink estates. And if the sink estates are a sad sign of the times, equally so are the royal estates.