Will these fellows never learn anything?

The events of the past fortnight have been enough to test even Sir Compton's faith in the ideal of honest public life almost to destruction.

Apart from the survival of McDebt - Labour MPs merely postponing the agony - three points stand out.

1) It seems that that time-expired dud Margaret Beckett may be the next Speaker. The only admirable thing about her is that she trained as a metallurgist in the dim and distant. Partisan, too much of an insider, slimy and not untainted by all the expenses stuff, she is hardly the free-thinking reformer that is undoubtedly what is needed. Her Speakership would tend to confirm that MPs have not understood the need to improve their image. Business as usual, though she will perhaps be thankful for the wig and stockings. Ghastly.

2) The expenses published today by the Parliamentary authorities have been redacted to the point where, although still full of juicy titbits, they hide the high crimes and misdemeanours - double dipping, flipping, CGT dodges - that are the real scandal. This is course gives the loathsome Telegraph a continued free run to dig through its unredacted disk, picking off the crooks and imbeciles one by one right up to the election. Again, MPs let slip a chance to stop this through a mixture of herd instinct, wholly inappropriate self-righteous indignation and a curious - and futile - belief that by keeping their individual heads down they might yet survive. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

3) One who has bowed to the inevitable is that former rising star Kitty Ussher. As averred here some weeks ago, the £20,000 claim for plastering in her London home was enough in itself to do for her. The coup de grace came last evening when correspondence with an accountant emerged offering her advice on how to minimise her tax liability. Oh, did I mention that she is a Treasury minister? Anyway, even she had to admit that her position was untenable and left the Govt after a conversation with McDebt. She is also standing down from her Burnley seat at the election. The fall of the house of Ussher. The real horror though is that the BNP could get the seat. After all, where are the feckless, hopeless, small-minded white working-class voters who sent her to Westminster going to turn now? Well, they'll either turn away or, in their justifiable anger, do something really silly.

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I find myself in a bit of pickle over The Times's outing of NightJack, whose blog is no more. It is morally dubious to throw rocks while hiding behind a made-up name. And yet as a coward, a sneak and someone who likes to wound but fears to strike, what is a blogger to do? Bite the bullet, I think.

Update five mins later: Very pleased with self at having edited profile to publish the above and all else under my real full name. Then went downstairs to collect the ironing and thought of all the terrible things I have written and how they could come back and bite me, especially in regard to work. Discretion or cowardice? A bit of both, and probably too much of the latter. So, some sort of obfuscation will have to continue and I know now that I shall never publish anything worthwhile as myself. Timid. Hopeless.