expenses

The other day my polling card turned up.

It's not long until polling day - the 6th of May. Weirdly, I'm actually on holiday that week. I'm not going anywhere exotic or anything, so I've not really got much of an excuse to avoid voting.

The media seems to be quite interested in the election this year. It's probably because this is the first time in a good while that it's not been guaranteed that Labour will get in. I'm not entirely sure that the general public is quite as interested.

Indeed, I think the whole expenses scandal could lead to lower numbers of voters than in most years. Well, I did think that until the whole TV debate thing. I didn't personally watch the debate myself, but obviously I've heard all about how Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems have had a surge in popularity since.

I'm not sure that will translate into an increase in their share of the votes. Certainly I doubt it would result in a sufficient change to give them power. Instead, it makes a coalition government more likely.

Traditionally coalition governments are inherently weak affairs, which sometimes pull in different directions to such an extent that they collapse. And there's always the risk of effectively giving power to a minority. Also it's always assumed that the Lib Dems would form a coalition with Labour as they tend to have similar views on things.

Anyway - the upswing of interest by the media means that there's been a lot more talk from the political parties getting air time. Which has also mean there's been quite a lot of things with the public questioning MPs, especially the heads of the parties.

One of the things these people naturally want to talk about is the expenses 'scandal' and I've found it fascinating.

Not for interest in the scandal itself, but because it's clear that people are angry, but many of them don't really know what they're angry about.

I mean, the impression I've been getting from some of the questions is that many people seem to be fundamentally opposed to MPs claiming any sort of expenses at all. Also, they don't seem to grasp that the vast majority of them were simply acting within the rules that had been established.

The first of those is bizarre. Part of my job often involves me travelling to places and therefore I claim that money back as expenses. Also, sometimes I need lunch or have to stay overnight or whatever, so I claim that as well.

That's what expenses mean - they're an expense you incurred in order to do your job. So when an MP does similar, in my opinion there's fundamentally no problem with them claiming the same. And yet people just seem to be angry that they claimed anything, which is bizarre.

The aspect that represents the real area of controversy is this issue of being able to claim for a second home and the costs of upkeeping said home. This is where things get a bit tricky, because an MP's job has a split personality.

All MPs obviously need to attend Parliament, which is in London. But an MP's job is also in his constituency, which could literally be anywhere in the country. Most people don't have a job where half the time you need to be in London and the other half you need to be somewhere else.

And the point is that your job requires this - it's not simply a lifestyle choice. And for some MPs we're talking hundreds of miles of separation - Cornwall or Scotland spring to mind as being rather distant locations.

The problem I guess is while I think rationally you could therefore justify the claiming of the travel costs, being able to claim for your second home is a might trickier. Especially when you add in all the dodginess of nominating which is your second home and that it's a house they're buying for themselves - once they stop being an MP they could sell it keep the money.

Plus on top of that they were able to claim for the upkeep costs, which is where you got all the stuff about duck ponds about. And of course it's a blanket system - MPs in London and close by were able to claim in the same way as MPs up north, or wherever.

But as I say, it's a trickier problem for me - on some level I don't totally disagree with them being able to claim for something to compensate for this issue of having to work in two places, it's just they set up a system where tacking the piss was the norm. I mean, if your job required that of you, you'd want some way of it not affecting your standard of living, right?

And it's that I don't think people have really grasped. The only thing they really did wrong was set themselves up with a bad system. It's a little unfair to judge them for what they actually claimed within that system.

And let's be frank - the amount of money we're talking about was actually pretty small. And only a tiny minority have been accused of anything like embezzling it.

Anyway, my real point here is that people just don't understand things. It's scary sometimes how they grasp the wrong end of the stick. And then they get to vote.