What precisely were you doing with glue in your bed?

It’s not the kind of conversation you want or expect to be having with your 11 year old at 10 o’clock in the evening. Particularly I feel in October when she’s got two layers of bedding and it’s not best weather for washing and drying heavy loads. Should have made her do it herself really.

But you know what? She didn’t at any point say “but I didn’t break any rules.” She knows perfectly well that’s a hopeless excuse. I don’t have specific rules on the timing and location of use of glue – I expect her to apply some common sense.

And that, it occurs to me is what is wrong with MPs. They appear to show as little good sense as 11 year olds caught spilling glue on the bedsheets. (Not a euphemism in this case.) When the instant rejoinder is “but I didn’t break any rules” any parent knows enough to raise eyebrows and tut in a knowing sort of way, and that is now my fairly standard response to stories of ministerial oddnesses. Yes, Dr Fox, I’m sure there isn’t a specific rule on not having your friends attend meetings without security clearance (actually that surprises me. I would have thought the security clearance thing *would* be a rule. More fool me.)

Overall, I’d like MPs and politicians of all types to start behaving with common sense and stop wriggling behind the rules. Particularly rules they’ve written themselves. The expenses scandal really wound me up, as no one working for an employer would have got away with that kind of behaviour, budgets have to be justified. But MPs only justify their behaviour to each other, generally speaking, and treat the general population with great disdain. But we aren’t fools, and we are increasingly watching, and rapidly running out of patience with you all.

Still I suspect I’ve got about as much chance of them all deciding to behave sensibly as I have of the 11 year old washing her own bedding. And only using glue in sensible locations in future.