Not going to dwell too long here, it's been done to death all over the media. But here's my take.
I work for a large company where the rules regarding expense claims appear somewhat tighter than those that our MP's have to adhere to.
The story I hear the most is that many of these claims are "within the rules". If that's correct (and I'm not going to argue here whether those rules are correct), then I'd have to say if my expense claims rules allowed me to claim for just about anything, trust me, I would.
The problem is not the MP's themselves, anyone will take what they can when it's permitted, it's the system itself that's fundamentally wrong.
What staggers me is it's taken so long for the public to find out how far disconnected from the real world the MP's expense system really is.
M.