The reason why a fish pie made with rotten fish and vegetables tastes foul is that the ingredients are rotten. No amount of fiddling with the recipe will ever fix this.
The farce with the MP's expense system has been known about for a long time. Its origins are from a time when the Government urged wage restraint by setting the example whilst secretly creating a lavish expense culture.
What's flabbergasting is that some of them couldn't even stick to such a lavish system and now they're claiming that the problem is they weren't paid a decent wage. It's shameless.
Of course this somewhat overshadows the more serious issue of expenses fraud. It seems an MP can repay that which is discovered to be stolen from the public purse and the punishment is simply a golden goodbye and a handsome pension. This system can't be fixed; the people and the culture need replacement and some of our right honourable should be spending time at her majesty's pleasure.
What parliament needs is new ingredients and not a fiddled with recipe.
Before anyone says that I shouldn't tar all with the same brush, where have the good MPs trying to replace this whole rotten system been hiding for the last decade? A few may be worthy of remaining but as for the rest ... they should be thrown overboard.