Oh, you poor dears!

MPs whining, through the mouthpiece of their doctor:

The new, tougher expenses regime is damaging MPs' "mental wellbeing", the doctor who looks after them has said.

Dr Ira Madan told a committee looking into the system that its "frustrations and difficulties" had increased workloads but decreased rewards.

She also said MPs were tired of being the butt of jokes about their expenses.

Hmmm. It is difficult to feel too much sympathy for MPs on this one - particularly since the current system, as frustrating and difficult as it might be, is down to the gross abuse of the previous system by many of them. And as for them being the butt of jokes? Oh, please. The poor fucking dears. Aren't they sensitive flowers? Seriously, if you are that thin-skinned that quasi-topical jibes about expenses, you are in the wrong profession.

And she said they were coming under greater pressure because of the "increased ability for constituents to readily contact members by email".

God for-fucking-bid that MPs should be readily contactable by MPs - the very people they are elected and paid to represent! What sort of a crazy system is that?

I was once taught that if you do something in your job and get caught, you should keep your head down, work bloody hard and prove yourself so your sin is ultimately forgiven. What do our MPs do now a system has been put in place after a scandal that dragged the Commons through the gutter and back again? Groan and grumble about how their lives have been made just a little bit more difficult. It is utterly pathetic, and further tarnishes their already devastated reputations.