Let’s talk about the real issues

Parliament returned to businesses again this week and, sadly, MPs expenses are back at the top of the agenda.

This is unfortunate on two levels.

Firstly, because the ongoing scandal – and it is a scandal – brings great shame on our country and many of our politicians and that can be good for no-one. That said, it is clearly right that the mess is cleared up and those individuals who overstepped the mark pay back what they owe – and, where appropriate, be prosecuted.

But there is a second reason.

Many commentators thought that the issue of MPs’ expenses would dominate Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions. However, what they forgot was that the session was due to begin with Gordon Brown reading out the names of the 37 servicemen who had died in Afghanistan since the House of Commons last met.

It took the Prime Minister almost four minutes to read out the name, rank and regiment of each of the individuals who had fallen, each detail listened to very sombrely by all of the MPs in the Chamber.

And it is issues like the Army’s current role and objectives in Afghanistan, together with the ongoing recession and the need to rebuild our economy that our politicians and the wider nation should be discussing and debating – not the how much and for what our MPs’ have been claiming in expenses.

The sooner we can draw a line under the matter and move on to dealing with the bigger problems that affect this country and its people, the better it will be for us all.

Party almost over for Labour

The Labour Conference comes to an end in Brighton later today, and thanks goodness for that.

I don’t know about you, but I am becoming rather sick at the sight of Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson, Harriet Harman and Ed Balls being given free rein to talk down to us and tell “what the British people are thinking” day after day from the Conference platform and night after night on the news.

I’m out and about talking to so-called “ordinary people” much more often than they are and, with regard to Keighley and Ilkley, I can assure the Labour high command that local residents here have long since had enough of them.

Following, no doubt, yet another patronising speech from ambitious-beyond-her-talents Harriet Harman this morning, the Party Conference roadshow will move on to Manchester next week for the main event – the Conservative Party Conference.

I do hope that you, like me, will find what the Tories have to say much more inspiring and fresh that what we’ve been subjected to over the last few days from Labour.