The media have bought hook, line and sinker the story that Thomas Legg has been hard on poor MPs, making them pay back gardening or cleaning bills over an arbitrary limit.
In fact, on average those MPs asked to make a repayment are being asked to pay less than 0.25% of their salary plus allowances over the period. And with the media diverted to slight repayments of trivial items, the real big money – fake mortgages and capital gains tax evasion through “flipping” – where MPs rake in tens and even hundreds of thousands of pounds, has gone completely undisturbed.
Don’t look over here, look over there! Talk about a dumb media.
Meantime at least the Mail, Independent and Telegraph, and perhaps others, have quoted me on Legg and the Sierra Leone inquiry, because journalists nowadays seldom leave their offices and do their “research” through google. The implication is that in fact Legg has turned into a ferocious prober of iniquity. Why anybody would pay for the facile mainstream media is beyond me.