Oh Lord! Save us from the high class chancers

Last week it was our Westminster MPs who were getting roasted after an independent pay review body recommended they get a jaw-dropping 11% pay rise.

This week the appalling waste of cash that is the House of Lords has been getting well basted after many of its over-stuffed turkeys were exposed as flying the coop on a daily basis to dip their gizzards into the taxpayer’s thinning expense gravy.

In for particular criticism was shamed excon Tory peer Lord Hanningfield.

What a cracker this Lord of the Leeches has proved to be. Jailed for nine months in 2011 for fiddling his expenses he was amazingly allowed to return to this elitist chamber to continue his scamming ways, this time by clocking in for as little as

21 minutes to make sure he qualified for his £300 daily allowance.

Order! Order! Out of order, more like.

Even when irrefutable proof of his wrongdoing was dangled under this bloated pudding’s nose he defiantly stood his ground and ranted: “I’m not sorry for the taxpayer, I have given them hundreds of thousands of pounds over the years working for nothing.”

He added, laughably, that he was “good value”.

There were excuses ranging from having to pay his dog walkers and personal assistants to there not being enough room in the House for everyone and that all the other Lords were doing the same as him.

Not one hint of an apology was offered no contrition, no remorse, in fact quite the opposite.

By defending the indefensible he only gave further credibility to the argument that a spell in the nick only makes you a more accomplished criminal.

Why was he ever allowed back in the first place? Why was he not stripped of all his allowances and title when he was first exposed as a cheap crook? Why do we continue to prop up him and others with £110 million of our hard-earned readies every year?

Why do we need 830 of them? Why are they not elected?

The questions are as endless as the amount of cash they try to trouser.

Of course not all are on the take there are a few exceptions.

Hard working men and women from all walks of life, those deserving of title, privilege and prominence.

People who don’t cook the books or cock at a snook at the ordinary Joe, people who work very hard to ensure our democracy is protected and not taken for granted by that other gang of fiddlers and diddlers from The House of Commons.

There are people like Lord Haughey, Baron Reid and Baroness Williams, to name a few.

But let’s face it, they’re becoming as scarce these days as a busy pub and the question we should be asking is: do we really need a House of Lords at all?

Well, given recent surveys this relic of the 17th Century should be on borrowed time. An astonishing 76% of voters want to see them elected and 78% want those jailed barred from sitting.

I couldn’t agree more, but the problem here is that turkeys won’t vote for Christmas certainly not this privileged gobbling flock!

All parties’ manifestos have promised change, but none have ever delivered and nor will they.

It’s yet another pathetic merry-go-round of lies that we have come to expect from Westminster, and the debate over an elected House of Lords looks set to go around for at least another 500 years.

Here in Scotland, though, we at least can do something about it next September.

But hey, it’s Christmas, so I won’t bang on about that this week. Plenty time for all that . . .