Fiddling, Burning

Three MPs prosecuted, all retiring (so now retired), and all from the party then almost universally predicted to be about to go down to a landmark defeat at the hands of another party which was then almost universally said to be on course for a landslide majority, despite the psephological impossibility of such a result.

Everyone else let off. Including everyone from what turned out to be merely the largest party in a hung Parliament.

Understandably, no prosecution in relation to the moat or the duck house, since - now, pay attention - not a penny was ever paid out for either of those. The MPs who submitted those claims were just chancers, no better than that, but no worse, either.

What else would you have to do to get 18 months these days? In similar vein, you will only be prosecuted for perjury if you dare to take money off major media interests; watch out for Tommy Sheridan's sentence, and compare it with those meted out to people who have merely caused physical injury or what have you, rather than daring to deprive Rupert Murdoch of a few quid while making rich lawyers look daft by sacking one of them in order to beat another one.

Not that any of this has anything to do with politics. That was the whole point of this "scandal". It gave people something to talk about in the run-up to a General Election "contested" by parties that could all have been in coalition with each other without the slightest compromise of principle. Now, that would have been a proper story, genuinely worthy of the most animated discussion in every pub in the land.