For a few days I've been wanting to write about the MPs expenses scandal. I was planning to write a speech that I thought Gordon Brown should give about how the scandal has been terrible for British politics, severely undermining the trust that we have in our MPs, and how Parliament needed to move towards radical transparency to foster trust and better inform the electorate. But David Cameron is a step ahead of me. It's not often I say this, but I agree with a lot of what he said in this interview.
And Cameron has actually put his money where his mouth is (he may or may not have claimed expenses for this money). If you go here and click on the link about halfway down it opens a Google Docs spreadsheet outlining expenses claimed by his shadow cabinet - when, by whom, why, and how much.
That's fantastic. I still don't get how Owen Patterson was able to claim for £108.16 worth of newspapers, but now I know that he did, and if it bothers me I can do something about it.
It shouldn't have taken a huge scandal like this for such a system to be implemented, but the more initiatives the government has like this, the better. The more transparent Parliament is, the better. And the more informed the electorate are about what's actually happening inside Westminster, the better.