Just a comment or two...

I see that Richard Thomas, the outgoing Information Commissioner has spoken up about the MP's expenses scandal (Daily Telegraph Thursday, June 11, 2009). Under the headline, 'It's their own fault says data watchdog', the Information Commissioner said that MP's had not taken the Freedom of Information Act seriously enough and may have 'modified' their behaviour if they had. He added that they had not anticipated the consequences of greater transparency and that they (MP's) were running the system expecting permanent secrecy. Even after all the recent furore about their expenses, we still have MP's denying that they have done anything wrong and stating that they were only following guidelines, their own guidelines of course; guidelines that were designed to maximise their income to the cost of the public purse. These very same people are now saying that the system will have to be overhauled and they are the ones who are going to do it. How can this be? If this were you and I, we would have been disciplined and probably sacked by now. We could never expect to take up the same type of employment again; who would trust us? So how can these MP's be trusted; these MP's who like secrecy? They can't be trusted, it's as simple as that.

I caught sight of a photo in one of the daily papers yesterday and it shocked me. It was a photo of a family fleeing from their home: husband and daughters, all fleeing from the awfulness of the wife and mother's arrest for child sex abuse in a Plymouth Nursery. We are all shocked by these revelations, perhaps more so because of where this abuse was allegedly taking place and because it was a woman who was allegedly doing the abusing. What of her family though? Who's taking care of them at this most shocking moment in their lives; this husband and these daughters?