…Not that I am suggesting for an instant that they are guilty, of course, as it seems finally a court of law will get to decide on the MPs’ expenses scandal. While I remain sceptical about the moral posturing conducted about MPs by some of the equally morally dubious press, I have always said that cases where there was evidence of criminal behaviour should be dealt with.

Now we know four people will face criminal charges over misuse of public money. And each of their circumstances helps us paint a picture of what was going on with the Fees Office and MPs’ claims.

So as not to be biased, I’ll start with the Conservative member of the quartet, Lord Hanningfield. It is said that between March 2006 and May 2009, he submitted claims for overnight stays in London when he was actually driven home to Chelmsford. Earlier versions of the story in the media contained information that has subsequently been removed for Contempt of Court reasons. Suffice it to say that it appears from earlier quotes that Fees Office staff were informing those that they oversaw that charging for overnight stays and then sloping off back home – or staying the night with friends instead - was a perfectly acceptable thing to do.

Well it isn’t – and those alleged to have made such claims should clearly have known better. But it also serves to illustrate the catastrophic failure of the Fees Office to do its job – it has been seeking to run things for the benefit of MPs and peers rather than for the taxpayers that are its real masters.

Elliot Morley is charged with claiming mortage expenses during a three-year period on either a false basis or when the loan had already been paid off. He claims that he didn’t realise that mortgage had been paid off and he has repaid the money. It is also worth noting that the Fees Offices clearly didn’t see fit to check his claim over this long period of time. In my view, it is totally correct that these charges should be heard by a court. This is not the same as charging for a duck house or trouser press; the allegations – and they are only allegations – amount to something else entirely.

David Chaytor is charged with submitting false invoices and coming up with an ingenious scheme whereby a flat that he actually owned was “rented” from his daughter and mother in order to claim expenses on it. Again, these are only charges, but it seems to me that if MPs put half as much energy into lawmaking as they appear to have put into finding ways of maximising their expense claims, the country might not be in such a dire situation. And once again, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that somewhere along the line, the Fees Office knew of this arrangement and were happy to accommodate it. And if they didn’t, they should have.

Jim Devine took Robin Cook’s seat after the latter died in 2005 and is charged with using false invoices. His case is interesting because he became an MP only four years before the story broke. I refuse to believe that a man of previously good character - and who has been through a rigorous selection process – suddenly decides to come up with false invoices after only three years in the House of Commons.

I think that somewhere in all of this there were people assuring MPs that it was fine to claim for bathplugs, fine to claim for overnight stays and then go home, okay to put through a “replacement” invoice for one that was lost and no problem to use a variety of tricks to keep the expense payments as high as possible.

That doesn’t excuse the MPs, all of whom are guilty of poor judgement and avarice. But it does ask questions about the officials involved in this discredited process and whose names are not plastered all over the papers at the moment.

Nigel Farage - standing down

I once flirted with UKIP membership - back in around 1999, when things were really bad for the Conservative Party. I looked at their website and it all seemed pretty sound. But then I realised that if I wanted my Eurosceptic view to be represented in the European Parliament, I needed to vote for a party with a realistic chance of influencing a voting block.

I also realised that every vote not cast for a Conservative would be a help to the Liberal Democrats and Labour and that their resultant MEPs would represent exactly the pro-integrationist, pro-federal and pro-power transfer European ideals that I opposed.

Since that time, I’ve never contemplated supporting UKIP and have come to regard it as a complete political menace. Not only does the party harbour some views that are, shall we say, too off-field for even the right of the Conservative Party (and as someone on the left of the Conservative Party that’s a long way past my tolerance level) but they seem completely incapable of understanding what a political contradiction they are.

In council and Parliamentary seats across the country, areas that would otherwise be represented by Conservatives are instead represented by Liberal Democrats and (less so now) Labour because UKIP has taken a greater number of votes from natural Conservative supporters than the winning margin. It’s totally crackers, because the loyal UKIPpers have ended up with a representative opposed to everything they stand for rather than one atune to their views but more moderate.

During the MPs’ expenses nonsense, UKIP has been benefitting from the ill-done deeds of mainstream politicians. Goodness only knows why. Let’s start with Ashley Mote in 2004, move on to the issue about MEP attendance, the arrangement with the BNP and the latest saga about donations from a supporter not on the electoral register.

Over expenses, they have no MPs to be subjected to scrutiny but the indications from Europe are that if the party had MPs, they would be among the most generously expensed. The weasel words from the UKIP website about transparency are not worth anything – if you really want to vote UKIP because you detest the EU that much fine; but please don’t vote for them because they are trustworthy on expenses!

Personally, I believe that the UK should renegotiate our relationship with the EU into the trading and neighbourly co-operation one that was voted for in 1975. But voting UKIP isn’t going to deliver that.

The price of UKIP is pro-European elected representatives - not to mention about £2million each, apparently.

Sir Thomas Legg about to send out letters

A slightly lightweight but nevertheless poignantly acerbic little morsel on ConservativeHome.

I understand the anger about expenses but really, isn’t reforming the system enough? My father says that there are four motivating emotions for humans – greed, fear, lust and jealousy. It’s clear to me that this story is not so much about the moral rectitude of MPs but about the newspapers manipulating the latter of these emotions to shore up their own shaky position and lure readers back off the internet.

Please don’t go – it only encourages them.

Let’s imagine a scenario. You’re self-employed and have diligently paid your taxes for a number of years. There have been, in that time, several instances where you have sought tax advice from HMRC on what was and wasn’t acceptable to it. You have always followed the advice that you have been given and naturally, you have been as tax-efficient as possible and taken advantage of whatever tax breaks were on offer and accounting methods were practical.

Then, the government of the day decides that the system should be changed. It enacts a retrospective law meaning that tax breaks that you were advised to take previously no longer apply and the tax-efficient accounting methods you used are illegal. It passes legislation to say that those who used those tricks should be named and shamed in the national press and will be retrospectively charged for the benefit they derived.

Half the population is issued with letters from HMRC surcharging them for tax liable under methods that were cleared by tax authorities at the time. They are given a deadline to pay up and are photographed on their way to tax offices with chequebooks in hand. Half lose their jobs.

Now, I admit there are a few key differences between the above and MPs expenses. It’s taxpayers’ money, for one (although the ownership of money to me is a red herring). They won’t be much out of pocket and some of them, just a few, have probably committed criminal offences. But the principle is similar – here we have a group of people who operated under a code of understanding run by a responsible body – the Fees Office – and who have had retrospective justice foisted on them by a hawkish media.

Yes, the system was evidently over-generous and of a previous time. It needed – and still needs – serious reform and clarity for MPs and public alike. And I certainly don’t hold any candle for Jacqui Smith, one of the worst Home Secretarys this country has ever suffered.

But I don’t understand the fair play in saying to anyone that the rules have now changed and that they will be applied in such a way as to make it necessary for you to make a public apology for things that were at the time entirely within the system.

To those who say that MPs should have known that the system was rotten and not claimed for these more outlandish items I simply say – would you have done the same? Our DNA is impregnated with selfish behaviour that only the best will overcome and grabbing everything to which you are legally entitled is a desire not limited to MPs.

The Telegraph will no doubt invite us to revisit time and time again its one decent scoop of the last decade but if we are to build trust in the system once again, we need to know when it is time to act for the future rather than dwell on the past.

Pity, pity, pity the poor voters of Buckingham in May 2010. I suppose you could argue that rather than being saddled with Labour luvvie John Bercow masquerading as a Tory as a shoe-in next time, things have slightly looked up for them with the news that UKIP fruitcake Nigel Farage is to break parliamentary tradition and stand against him.

Iain Dale expertly analyses the delicate political and Conservative implications of this bold move but really – is this best that we can offer the voters of this part of the world? What a sad reflection on our political scene this is.

It’s been a case of France and Scotland again this weekend, with the news that Mark France, the anti-Julie Kirkbride protester has been sacked by the Job Centre – no irony there, then. They rightly saw his vitriolic pursual of Ms Kirkbride (even though the blog is rubbish) as political activity, which as a public servant he shouldn’t be engaged in.

We’ll just wait for the employment tribunal now then – once again, no irony. But that’s the DWP for you.

Elsewhere, Scottish supremo Alex Salmond is sure that the early release of Abdelbasset Ali Al-Megrahi was the correct one. Wrong. The Americans are deeply unimpressed and as the major backers of any independence movement going, particularly in the UK (IRA funding, anyone?), the SNP has shot it’s own ultimate aim very sorely in the foot.

Nice going for only two years in government!

From the BBC’s reaction to Alan Duncan’s admittedly fruity comments that MPs had to “live on rations” and were “treated like shit”, you’d think that he’d gone to war with France. One also can’t help but wonder whether, on the day that Mervyn King gave a stark warning about the economy and where unemployment (perhaps including me) reached nearly 2.5million, some Labour lackey hasn’t been storing this one up for a while to feeding to the media at a timely moment.

The point about Alan Duncan is that, to quote Jim Hacker’s chief whip:

“In politics, you have to learn to say things with tact and finesse, you berk.”

I actually agree with Alan Duncan’s sentiment, which I am confident is shared by many in Westminster. They’ve been made scapegoats for an outdated and over-generous system meekly implemented by a lax Fees Office regime. They feel that they only acted within the rules and that a higher standard of self-regulation than they understood to be necessary has been retrospectively applied by the media and public in the face of circumstances that didn’t exist when these claims were made.

There has been a gutful of hypocrisy from journalists whose expenses are equally questionable but not publicly accountable as well as the man in the street, who is happy to criticise in the knowledge that if he could get a second home plus fixtures and fittings on his expenses, he’d jolly well do so.

But until reform is forthcoming, Alan Duncan and others would do well to bite their tongues and keep their self-pity, however justified, to themselves. Particularly when speaking to people who’ve been filmed on You Tube digging silly shapes into their well-manicured lawn.