There has been much talk recently of the fact that Maria Miller MP over-claimed about £90K on expenses, and thanks to the fact that her mates were in charge of discipline, all she had to do was to pay back just under £6K of it and issue a half-hearted apology. No criminal charges, no sacking, no proper consequences of any kind.

It goes without saying that if you or I swindled the taxpayer out of £90K, say through a fraudulent benefits claim or by under-declaring our income on our tax return, we'd probably be facing a prison sentence.

It seems that some people think it's unacceptable that Miller gets to keep her job, as well as the money.

Well, of course it's unacceptable, but it's also completely unsurprising that she's got away with it and that the Tory party leadership are as relaxed as they are about the whole thing.

Remember the 2009 expenses scandal? The political classes learned a valuable lesson from that.

That lesson was that they can fiddle their expenses as much as they like, and even if they get caught and get a slew of dreadful headlines in the press and a great feeling of anger against them, it doesn't matter.

Remember the 2010 election? The vast majority of votes went to Labour and the Tories, despite all their criminal behaviour over their expenses.

The lesson the political classes learned from the 2009 expenses scandal is that they don't have to give a shit. The plebs will keep voting for them anyway.