At our expenses

A few thoughts on the expenses scandal:

It's not so much that MPs have been feathering their first and second nests that is the outrage.

It's the poverty and misery that MPs cheerfully inflicted on society's most vulnerable citizens while they - MPs - were ransacking the allowances account, and, presumably, enjoying untold pleasant evenings out and in. Tis the lousy knowledge that even as oversold tarts like Hazel Blears were carefully explaining to us that salary control, frugality (particularly in the public sector), anti-union laws and the dreadful terms and conditions of the private sector were crucial to civilised society, they were beautifying moats and latrines, and reappointing flowerbeds, and paying off mortgages at such a canter that they missed the glorious moment when they finished.

The real tragedy is that none of it is any surprise - certainly not to those who have learned firsthand that modern government - much like old government, perhaps - looks actively to punish anyone without useful political or financial clout, and happily reward itself on the proceeds.

Trust in government - and indeed anyone in a position to cut the average guy a break - disappeared long before the sticky paws of Blears and Morley, et al, crept into the till. The trade union grassroots could give you hundreds, and probably thousands, local examples of skewed and screwed political decisions that have made life worse for just about everybody, apart from a handful of private sector contractors.

You may think here of small, but monumental (to locals, anyway) examples like the thousands of pounds cut from the budget of the Hammersmith community law centre, and the 100% funding cut to Hammersmith immigrant support group Horn of Africa (see law centre link above). As we speak, there are the plans to dismantle the sheltered housing scheme in north London (locals plan another protest in Hendon this week). It's all part of the same ideological wreckage that encourages some c-list bandit to profess that he didn't know he'd paid his mortgage. The list really does go on.

It includes the national disgrace that is the dire treatment of low paid careworkers around the country - people who have learned the very hard way that privatisation of care services means a fast route to subsistence living for anyone in a hands-on caregiving role.

In the past ten years, the lives of many careworkers (they're mostly women) have been ruined as private companies have taken carehomes over from the public sector, and cut the wages, holiday and sick pay allowances of their already-poorly paid staff in a ceaseless bid for better returns. Careworkers' only response has been to take strike action - a largely thankless pursuit that ranks so low on vested interests' list of interests that their own press offices don't even know about it: I rang Barnet council once for an official line about the longrunning indutrial dispute its careworkers were having with their new employer, the Fremantle Trust and the press officer I spoke to said 'who is Fremantle?'

On the careworkers have fought, though - mainly because, it seems, that making life vaguely difficult for employers gives some form to the shrinking hours between visits from bailiffs.

Here are Welsh careworkers in protest, and Bolton careworkers in protest, and Barnet careworkers two years into their thankless dispute with their private sector employer.

In 2008, the TUC produced a report that demonstrated that the care sector had "some of the highest incidence of employment rights abuse" in the country - not exactly news to those on the circuit, but a useful confirmation. The lives of the women on the rough end of those statistics have more or less been destroyed - I've documented their stories in a lot of detail here and at Liberal Conspiracy, and they've rarely made for happy reading, or writing.

The expenses row will be no surprise to the women I've spoken to - they know better than anybody that we're up against a ruling elite that can't see past gilded invites to bankers' pissups. They've been on the butt-end of political love-ins with the private sector and big-money lifestyles for a while.