I think Libby Purves is angry

"The only regret is that while a couple of the more outrageous milkers of expenses have been sacked or demoted, most of them sail on undamaged, “within the rules”.

Not within natural justice or reasonableness: just the rules. Here is Barbara Follett, millionaire's wife, charging you and me £94 every three weeks for window-cleaning; meanwhile, Margaret Beckett's garden cost us £6,500, including rockery (so important for a minister to have a good rockery, don't you think?). Here are Ann and Alan Keen netting £100,000 of public funds by having a mortgage each, and Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper also doing rather well from his 'n' hers claims. Oh, and marvel at Peter Mandelson's new shower, for which we paid £3,000 five years ago (the ritziest shower in Hartlepool, I'll be bound).

And Tony Blair? Don't start me. Not only did his new Trimdon kitchen cost us £10,600 (plus £50 for servicing the Aga), but thanks to the fine ferrets who battled for disclosure we can now gaze, online, at the very forms on which a Prime Minister made us pay the mortgage interest on £90,000. He borrowed it against a house which - Mrs Blair writes - only cost them £30,000, plus the same again to do it up. Is that a legitimate expense? Did Blair need to spend that money in order to have a billet in his constituency? No. It was bunce. The loan - whose interest we paid - went to fund his future property in Connaught Square.

It was “within the rules”. Just as Honourable Members - who have hobbled employers with strict anti-discrimination law - can pay public salaries to their family members without any open interviews to see if there are better candidates; just as the ridiculous “John Lewis List” lets them charge the taxpayer £150 per dining chair, demand free dry-cleaning for their personal clothes, and spend £795 of our money on a sideboard and £750 on a stereo (God forbid they might have to go to Currys). They may charge a grand total of £23,000 of home equipment, to keep for ever, untaxed. As for MEPs, draw a veil. It's Monday. Nobody feels strong enough to think about that."

That's from Libby Purves's column in today's Times do read the rest. Personally I found it a touch sanctimonious about how wonderful working mothers are and how hard they work and how badly they are treated, but at least she recognises that Caroline Spelman's "crime" is minor when compared to the "within the rules" claims of many senior Labour MPs.