Time to play fair

OK, so MPs have been outed again playing fast and loose with their expenses and maximising their take-home by defining their domestic arrangements in any way that suits. Perhaps, in these most cynical of times, we should not be surprised that the Home Secretary would include a claim for a bath-plug (cost 88p) and some dodgy porn for her husband, in an attempt to max-out her £23,000 per year allowance for her second home, (which is, in fact her first or 'real home' if we accept that she doesn't really spend most nights sleeping on her sister's couch).

Don't get me wrong, I believe in public service and I appreciate the effort of everyone who puts themselves in the firing-line to deliver difficult public-sector jobs. By and large, I've always found public sector workers to be 'in it' for all the right reasons, and doing thankless work for much less pay than their private sector counterparts. But appearing to be relatively clean in comparison to reckless 'snout-in-trough-not-my-problem' investment bankers just isn't good enough.

I work in the charity sector, where we accept all of the 'private sector' risks that competition brings, but we face those risks with a set of ethics and an openness to public scrutiny that is unrivalled by colleagues in other walks of life. If city bankers had to account for their businesses like I have to present charity accounts, we wouldn't all be having to bail them out with our grand-children's inheritance. If a Labour Home Secretary looks like she's on the take, is it any wonder that the likes of Fred Goodwin show no remorse in getting away with being bad businessmen and still expecting us to provide them with the comfortable old age that they've denied to millions of others?

Seems simple. Run your business like it was a charity and manage your investments as sustainably as you would tend your allotment.