Welcome to my blog...

By David Higgerson on Mar 31, 09 07:00 PM

EVER had one of those experiences where something you've been struggling with for ages is solved within seconds by someone else? A bit like when you wrestle with a jar and then someone comes along - normally in my case, they're shorter, older or female - and whips it open without so much as a second thought?

This blog has been my virtual jar for the past week or so as I wrestled with the situation every blogger has come up against: What to write in that first blog. How to make the introduction and actually say something of interest. How to sum up what's to come without being self-serving. You get the sort of thing.

Then along came Graham Allen, Labour MP for Nottingham North, talking about the issue which everyone's getting their teeth into: MPs expenses.

Speaking on Five Live's Drivetime show today, Mr Allen was making, as best he could, the point that the expenses system needed sorting but that there were much bigger fish to fry at the moment - the economy, G20, poverty and so on.

So far, so very understandle. Then he followed up, while talking about what MPs were claiming, by saying he felt it was perfectly acceptable for him to claim for the cost of a kettle for his home in London because, as he put it, he liked a cup of tea while working.

And with that one sentence - and the reaction it provoked straight away from listeners - Mr Allen opened the metaphorical jar for me without probably even realising it. He summed up the life inside Parliament - it's a world apart from the rest of us, a world where those inside believe taxpayers should be paying for any expense they run up against, right down to the kettle for a brew.

As the blurb says on the right hand side, I've been a political journalist at various levels over the last decade. The one thing which has always surprised me is how politicians change as they become used to the trappings of office - be it at parish council or national Government level. This blog will aim to burst the bubble within which politicians live. I don't expect them to listen, but I hope it'll be a good read along the way.

Welcome to my blog

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