Political cartoonists who find themselves in a bit of a fix for deadlines might like to check out the report on MPs’ finances due out today. Go on, just throw in a trough labelled “taxpayers’ money” and some porcine politicians – please, it’ll make a change from all the bloody chimps. In the meantime, the rest of us can all look forward to a good nosy.

MPs are in general good value, especially in comparison to certain other countries. Perhaps we should pay them more, to ensure that they really are independent, and have no need to go off cap in hand to tobacco companies (for example). They might not need to go through all the impertinence and bother of declaring their interests.

Or perhaps we should bring back something along the lines of the Property Qualification Act of 1711, to ensure the right sort of people for the job.

Nosemonkey addition: Straight Banana has a good post comparing UK MP and MEP cash situations here (although the page formatting seems to bugger up when doing direct links).