Pots Call Kettles Black.

MP's on the Public Accounts Committee have issued a report today on the practice of paying public employees through private companies in order for them to avoid tax. This scam, widespread in the Civil Service, has now been revealed to be similarly widespread at the BBC. The Committe is quite right that this is little better than fraud as those in public employment pretend that they are actually working for a private company and their employers turn a blind eye. However, it must also be said that MP's can hardly take the moral high ground as their expenses continue to be nothing more than a sick joke. They might well pay their taxes through PAYE as public employees but what does that matter when they are allowed to claim back the cost of everything from a can of dog food to a £2 million pound London mansion? They have much in common with higher paid civil servants and BBC "personalities" - all are lazy free-loading scroungers and all of them are content to stand aside as the disabled and the unemployed are villified and punished for being nothing more than unlucky.