Yes, she should resign

Do I think Maria Miller should resign? Frankly, I think that's the least she should do.

She has abused the expenses system.

She has tried to avoid accounting for her actions.

If her apology to the House of Commons is anything to go by, she has failed to take the matter seriously.

Then there's the matter of the missing 50k. Did she in effect defraud the taxpayer?

I don't know.

I do know that very, very few MPs have ever defrauded the public purse. But a lot of the public now take it for granted that 'they're all at it.' That's a bad view of politicians to have circulating in the country. Many MPs, I'm sure, come into politics to do their best for their community and find themselves tainted by the few among them involved in expenses fiddles.

This is bad news for democracy. Who in their right mind would sign up for parliament now, knowing how much the public despise them? And are we, the voters, not slightly suspicious of people who do come forward as candidates these days?

Maria Miller's a Tory. The MPs who have gone to jail for expenses fraud in recent years have been Labour people. Does being a Tory, a cabinet minister and one of very few women in the cabinet mean she gets special protection? She needs to be investigated by the police and charges brought if appropriate.

I could see the point if this was the first time this kind of incident has happened, but we've had years of this now.

One of the problems with the Westminster parliament is that MPs are mainly pretty far away from their voters for most of the year. Are they always aware of what we out here think of them? Or do they only hear good news from those who work from them? (This was at one time a problem with headteachers of secondary schools: they stayed in their offices attending to paperwork. It was only when they got out into corridors and classrooms that school management improved.) MPs also work in a terrific club, with every kind of facility laid on, intended to make sure they can focus on the job in hand. (Who was the Man in the White Suit - Martin - somebody who opposed a sitting MP Neil Hamilton and won? He swore he was only in parliament for a term but loved the clubbish atmosphere so much it was hard to get him to stand down.)

We need to change the expenses system altogether, so that politicians have no say in how their expenses are allocated. Setting up an independent agency for this would leave no opportunity for the nod and wink stuff that has clearly gone on in the past.

To be fair, there was a time - up to the 90s maybe - when major money was to be made on expenses in the public sector. But then HMRC looked into it all and suddenly there was gey little room for manoeuvre. Maybe they need to have another look at parliament.

And while I'm on the subject of special protection: if I work in a school and a child or a member of staff discloses they have been abused, I have a duty of care to contact law enforcement and other agencies such as social work. But if an intern in parliament (no salary - no clout) claims he has been raped by an MP, no action needs to be taken - not even encouragement for the victim to go to the police, as far as I can see. There's parliamentary privilege, folks, and then there's abuse of power.