It’s Miller Time (about 30 seconds)

Not all pollution is airborne, as Richard Lutz explains.

Earlier this week my colleague Howard Elston had a cute little piece linking the polluted air over the southern half of Britain with what some loosely described as the Farage/Clegg debate.

Now I have one to add to this: Ms Maria Miller and her 30 second response to a hundred page report condemning her for playing loose and fast with the Parliamentary expenses open till.

Basically, the Rt Hon (sic) lady is a dab hand at the legalities of turning a buck at the taxpayers’ expense. She bought a second home in London (she represents Basingstoke which is well within commuting distance) and with the approval of rules, claimed £90,000 in upgrades. But as a good daughter, she had her elderly parents live in it. On our bill. She has since sold the residence for a £1.2m ( $2m) profit. And she can thank you and me for helping her in this cute deal.

Now Ms Miller is no backwoods pol who has trouble reading joinedy-up writing. She knows her stuff on how to manipulate the regs and rules: an LSE graduate in economics, a director for nine years at two advertising companies and, if she needed a bit of pillow talk, married to a lawyer.

She knew damn well what she doing. She knew how to scam, obfuscate and dawdle to try and make the allegations go away. And it stinks.

At first, the Parliamentary standards commissioner said Miller should re-pay £45,000 (about $75,000) in overclaimed allowances.

Then it was mysteriously reduced to only £5,800 (about $9,000) when MPs on the self appointed standards committee over-ruled the amount- but only if she ate humblepie and …errr…apologised. She did in 71 words, all of them stripped of meaning and content.

This latest episode really underlines the sense of entitlement that our MPs have. They think there is one law for them. Another for the rest of the 55 million in Britain. As many have pointed out, if a an unemployed benefits recipient did this- even on a miniscule scale – he would be heading for the slammer and on the front page of the Express.

But she gets away with it.

But not without attempting to stifle the story. The Daily Telegraph- once dubbed The Torygraph because of its slavish links to the Conservatives- grabbed this tale and ran with it. But not without cackhanded attempts to shut it up.

Miller is a senior politician linked with the media investigations of the Leveson Inquiry. One of her dogsbodies rang the paper to remind its editor of this when it splashed this expenses wrangle.

Then Downing Street did the same.

These attempts to gag the press only goes to show what happens if politicians get more powers to regulate. Yes, a free press can lead to galling cretinous behaviour as illustrated by the Murdoch goons. But it also is able to shine a light on the people we elect to represent us (even with their expenses).