In the good old days it was not only legal but morally quite acceptable for everyone to avoid paying as much tax as possible; evading was illegal.

These days even putting a taxi on expenses warrants pages of abuse and a hefty prison sentence.

Fine; morality changes. But are we all avoiding seeing and solving the big problems by concentrating on trivia?

Personally I'd have been happy for Blair and Company to have lived on bending every tax rule there is if only he hadn't spent billions of our money on killing innocent Arabs.

I must admit that I don't really care where this guy lives or whether he pays taxes. Nor do I care where political parties get their money from. I do care about whether people are capable of doing the jobs to which they are appointed. Unfortunately most people in Parliament are not.

This is significant.

2 points:

1. Lord Ashcroft promised to become a permanent UK citizen as a condition of being elevated to the Lords. He did not do that.

2. William Hague did not check that he had indeed done so.

3. William Hague knew before David Cameron that this was so, but did not think it appropriate or necessary to tell Mr Cameron that the biggest donor to the party and holder of public office had backtracked on this promise.

and my personal point:

4. JK, you frequently say that all this business about expenses and bonuses etc is about jealousy towards people on higher incomes. So why is it that I, who live on Incapacity Benefit, am constantly brought before medical panels and asked to justify my entitlement to benefits when I have endorsements from my GP and a Clinical Psychologist- yet it is somehow ok for the mega rich to conveniently evade taxes on massive incomes. Kick the poor and let the rich off their taxes seems the motto du jour.

The world is upside down.

anyway, mon rant est over.