How do you change the world?

When the disgraceful claims came to light about MPs' expenses I was comparing their oversights to how the average person would be dealt with. There are some examples that are obvious lies, telling the expenses people one thing and the tax man another. The system for expenses is not strict. How did a husband and wife both manage to claim for their same second home? How does an MP get thousands of pounds for a mortgage that he doesn't have? There have been examples of second homes which look like they have nothing to do with Westminster but we pay for them. If only expense claims had been made public at once then none of this would have happened.

All claims (it seems) are within the guidelines, so I am not sure why MPs paid a lot of money back. They must think that their claims were not in 'the spirit' of the guidelines, whatever that is. Who decides the spirit? My first thoughts were that all MPs were behaving disgracefully, but is there a difference between taking one pound and taking a million? Is there a difference between giving a job to a friend and putting in claims for fictitious mortgages?

I am starting to see how complex this situation is and I now wish it would get sorted quickly. I think that some crimes have been committed and MPs should be dealt with just as severely as any other citizen. I think that mostly MPs have milked the system and worked within the system, which is not good and for the most part our poor electoral system will not weed them out. However my main concern is that the public become disillusioned with the major parties and vote for extremists. I sign off each blog with 'change the world'. We do need to change the world but we must not give extremists the opportunity of gaining power.

Change the world