Is it possible, even slightly, that Stephen Fry has Ewok blood?
I mean, there are exactly no physical signs of it, but all the same, there’s something about this recent interview on the subject of MPs’ expenses which has a gentle touch of Paploo’s noble yet somewhat risky strategy. The thrust of what he’s saying – and he is one hundred percent right – is that this present uproar about expenses absolutely misses the point, which is that we have been pretty appallingly served by our elected representatives. We were taken into a war on bad evidence (or some would say false evidence), we were led to believe we were financially mighty when it turns out we were participating in the greatest economic self-immolation in a century, and over the last decade we have been tested, measured, surveilled and managed to the point where many of our public institutions are about to fall over and shatter. We have been gifted with four thousand new laws, some of them unfathomable, some of them blatantly poorly drafted, many of them mis-used or over-used. Our environmen
