An open letter to all MPs

Dear Members of Parliament,

I am not the kind of person to describe tax as theft: I understand that the money gained from the public is meant to then be used to benefit the public as a whole through providing services such as the NHS.

I understand that when your constituency is not near London, you need to have somewhere to live in London so you can attend Parliament, and that we should therefore pay for the costs accrued in your having that residence.

In recent times the costs have been a popular topic of discussion, and rightly so. Some of your claims have been unreasonable, and you have been caught. Others are still under investigation.

You claim that your claims were within the rules: That might be so, but you wrote those roles, and in such an ambiguous manner that you could abuse them.

It used to be the law that black people could not sit next to white people on the bus. Just because something is a rule or a law does not mean that it is moral.

The committee that is investigating your claims is imposing limits retroactively on the claims that you could make.

You believe that it is unfair, that the rules as they were - weak, vague and easy to abuse - should be all that is taken into account.

When I hear you saying this, I only see you as petulant children, who having been caught doing something wrong, stamp their feet and cry "It's not fair!"

If you claimed more than £2000 a year for cleaning your second home, then you have either been embezzling some of the money, or have been grossly overcharged for the service.

You are by us elected to represent us. We give you money (and are given no choice in the matter) in order for you to do the job you chose to do and that we allow you to do, yet you take more than is reasonable. Money is a limited resource, yet when the account from which you take looks like it is going to run out, rather than reflecting upon your own spending habits and budgeting like the rest of us have to do, you demand that we give you more from now on.

Hard working, nice, honest people have to live on much less than you get as a default, and yet you keep on demanding more and more.

What you have done is corrupt. What you have done is immoral. What you have done is illegal in all but name. Tax is not theft, yet you have been stealing from those who put you in the position where you could steal from them.

When you disagree with the findings of investigations, you lose the trust of the people who you should represent. When you state that you are entitled to what you have gained illicitly, you generate no sympathy, only abhorrence.

Those who do what is right, apologise, and pay back what they are asked to might be forgiven by the populace, and re-elected.

Those who fight to the bitter end will be recognised for what they are: greedy, obnoxious, self-righteous and corrupt, and you will fall. Though you will still get your pensions, still be paid an extortionate amount of money for doing nothing, at the cost of the tax payer, for the rest of your lives.