Imagine you are a hardened criminal who has just stolen the Crown Jewels.

Would you (a) melt down the gold and sell off the gems to handpicked buyers associated with the underworld? Or (b) declare them to Companies House as assets on your balance sheet?

The ludicrous declaration by Sir Peter Viggers of the creation of a floating island for his ducks as an aid to his Parliamentary duties, places him firmly in the Laurel and Hardy camp. He made £1600 from the act, but I’m sure he didn’t need it.

There’s a lot of that around. MPs are illustrating just how inept they would be if ever they decided to walk on the wild side of the law. The real question is, does that make them unfit for public office, or, in an endearing sort of way, does it reveal their fundamental honesty?

The Tory claims are generally more colourful than Labour’s. Douglas Hogg’s moat is a good example. You can imagine him exclaiming, “Doesn’t everyone claim for their moat on expenses?”

We’re into darker territory with the many MPs who avoided Capital Gains Tax on a house sale by “flipping” the designation of the property to that of their main residence. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, no less, did this four times in four years. He was in effect indulging in property speculation at public expense. Surely he can’t survive?

Again, to put this in perspective, many buy-to-let landlords do something similar when offloading one of their properties. The technique is to rent out your own house and move into the flat or house you want to sell. Once you’ve been there for six months it becomes your main residence for tax purposes and can be sold without paying CGT. I’m told it’s a common practice in the trade.

Surely the Revenue has cracked that one by now, you may ask? Apparently not. The law lays down the six-month rule, and it’s not illegal to move from house to house. Shady, but within the rules.

The Secretary for Communities and Local Government, that walking rictus Hazel Blears, managed this, we are told, three times in one year without, apparently, actually moving in. A bit excessive? It’s still said to be “within the law”. And the law is made by Parliament.

Clearly, Members of Parliament have to have higher standards than your average Dell Boy down the Mile End Road. There can be no excuse for endearing incompetence for the important folk who make the rules the rest of us have to abide by on pain of increasingly draconian penalties. Laurel and Hardy are for Hollywood not Westminster.

Someone has to draw the line somewhere and it can’t be Gordon Brown. He’s too implicated in the wreckage of everything he’s touched over the past 12 years.

What’s much worse than the occasional Stan and Ollie is a calculating manipulator who deliberately turns every decision and action to his own, and his cronies’, advantage.

Brown is severely damaged goods and must relinquish the reins of power before the fumigation of government begins.

Duckgate is a passing amusement. Smile, and move on. There are much more threatening characters to remove from public life.

Let’s not be diverted. Bring on that General Election now!

John Evans

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