How is your moral compass?

In the week that has seen the exposure of the vast and very questionable expense claims made by MPs of all parties, I have been left wondering, where they each left their moral compass?

What I mean by moral compass is that innate sense of what is right and proper for oneself. The rules that you run your life by because you feel that that is the right thing to do, not because someone is watching over your shoulder.

That moral compass in the case of MPs has been shown this week to be badly out of alignment with the majority of the UK poulation; or has it?

It appears that the MP expense system (designed by MPs, run by MPs with rules set by MPs) was constructed in such a way as to encourage the topping up of the pay packet by claiming expenses that no other employer would allow.

As a consequence, many of the people who spend their time telling us what we should be doing, framing new laws that define what is acceptable, have themselves been broken the trust that they were once invested with.

But what would you do? When faced with a system that positively encourages you to go and buy a new TV and charge it to the Tax Payer, would your compass stay true?

Are each of us capable of staying withing our moral code without some notion of external scrutininy or the threat of it?

The answer seems clear, even if the majority of people have a clear sense of what is right and wrong, exposure to the light of day helps to ensure that we remain true to commonly agreed ideals.

Does that mean we can't have a secret part of our lives? No of course not; we are all entitled to have a secret if we want to...but please don't ask someone else to fund it!