We're very much enjoying the Daily Telegraph's coverage of the MP's expenses scandal here in the UK. The jokes about moats, Kit-kats, and porticos are all set to run and run, for months probably, if not years. Not since the days of the Profumo affair has the Houses of Parliament seen so many red-faces.

Our politicians, it seems, have had so many of their sticky little fingers in the kitty that it has taken the Daily Telegraph a whole week to list them all. The voting public are both angry and gleeful by turns. Angry that the people that we have entrusted to run our country have worked the system to gain at the tax-payer's expense, and gleeful at their dismay on having been found out.

The whole situation has come about because of Parliament's generous 'second home' allowance. The idea is that if you live outside of London, in order to attend debates in the Commons on a regular basis, you will probably need to maintain two homes. An MPs salary may be well-above the national average, but in order that all MPs have an equal chance to perform in Westminster, it was deemed necessary to subsidise the cost of running the 'second home', in whatever form that might take. Mortgage interest could be claimed, as well as the cost of maintenance, upkeep, and furnishing these not-so humble abodes. I would hate for you to think that this was a blank cheque. Far from it. There is a ceiling on this generosity, and it is a mere £23,083 per annum. Yes. £23,083 a year. Many voters who have bought homes, raised families, and lived their lives on less, find themselves wondering how such a large amount can be justified.

'Flipping' is the term being used for the practise of nominating first one property as the designated second home, then changing it to another. From my perspective, the second home, should always be the one that facilitates ease of access to parliament, but that's not how it works. MPs can name any property that they either own or rent as their second home, no matter where it is in the country. Flipping between properties has allowed many MPs to maximise their potential second home's allowance, so that they can maintain, decorate, and furnish, a succession of properties at the tax-payers expense. Some of the worst offenders have 'flipped' their designated second home three, four, or more times.

Despite what all these shennanigans over expenses might lead you to suspect, we Brits do tend to like transparency in our affairs of State. Unless information poses a threat to national security, sooner or later any amount of juicy nuggets worm their way to the surface under the Freedom of Information Act. Given that that is the case, it is spectacularly surprising that some of our MPs assumed they had nothing to fear when they 'flipped' between properties, or claimed mortgage interest payments on paid up mortgages, or cited the necessity of maintaining swimming pools, tennis courts and moats. Were they so arrogant as to imagine themselves untouchable, or did they view this extra benefit as a perk of the job?

The offending MPs come from all parties, and all political persuasions. Some have been innocent fall guys, claiming  within the rules from a generous expenses scheme, little suspecting that their receipts would some day be held up for public scrutiny. Others have cynically played the system to line their pockets in a ruthless and methodical way.

Douglas Hogg would surely never have claimed to have his moat cleared if he had realised that you and I might find out about it. Jacqui Smith might have checked her receipts more scrupulously if she'd realised that her husband had handed her the bill for his porn films, and Elliott Morley would almost certainly have thought twice about claiming £800 per month for interest payments on a mortgage that he'd already paid up.

That's the thing about living in a bubble. Sooner or later someone will come along and pop it.