Firstly, thank you to everyone who offered so much positive comments via Facebook, Twitter and email regarding my most recent post about the shocking increase in male suicide rates. It is probably the most response I have had to a blog in the eight years I have been writing them.

It has also gained me more readership after I suffered a dent in my confidence last week when I received a couple of anonymous, semi-sinister emails regarding the post previous to that. Emails that basically slaughtered me for daring to question whether Churchill was actually as great as the modern history books and populist media choose to suggest.

I shrugged off the suggestion that if it wasn’t for the great man (Churchill) I would now be speaking German, by contenting myself with the fact that had he stayed in power after the World War, I wouldn’t have spoken any language, as I would have died of bronchitis at the tender age of one month, because there would have probably been no NHS to save me.

Anyway, despite a mixture of personal contrition and annoyance at others about me having the temerity to question history, a friend of mine (Nick)  suggested to me the other day that I was perhaps better off trying to change people’s perspective of the present and the future rather than the past, as it would be more productive and fulfilling than attempting to re-write facts in to the history books that have traditionally been written and published by the ruling classes.

I think it was Nick’s polite way of saying the Churchill blog was a waste of energy.

So I am going to take his lead and use this post to write the words Miller, Maria, mortgage and dubious, as much as humanly possible. I am doing this in the hope that it will make at least one person decide not to vote for her at the general election in a couple of months’ time.

If it goes beyond one person not voting and in to double figures, I will be delighted. If it goes further than that, I will be in a state of heady ecstasy that I will find extremely hard to come down from. However, I will still regard one less vote for her in the Basingstoke safe seat, as a success of sorts.

Maria Miller: Basingstoke MP With a Chequered Expense Account

I am jumping on this because last week, Maria Miller gave a Q&A session at the college where my youngest son, Harry, is studying. Harry was initially excited as it would have given him the opportunity to ask her how she was still an MP when it was well documented that she was an alleged expenses fiddler who stole from the public purse.

However, when his tutor made it pretty obvious that she would answer any questions apart from those revolving around alleged cover up of expenses and possible wrongdoing, he questioned the whole process of democracy and freedom of speech and as a consequence, decided not to bother going.

In politics, public apathy can sometimes win without a fight and that’s a shame, because if my son had publicly accused Maria Maria of being an expenses fiddler, it would have been my proudest moment as a parent so far. That is because an MP who is a dodgy with accounting, should lose their seat and be kicked out of politics and treated like anyone else is.

However, believe it or not, it is not an offence to lie in parliament…that’s why MP’s do it all the time. You may recall those harmless cross party white lies about tuition fees, front line services and the non-existent nuclear warheads in Iraq. Politicians of any party can lie without having to justify breaking election manifestos and there is nothing we can do about it…just ask Nick Clegg.

Of course, if us commoners lie or commit fraud, we lose our jobs our dignity and even our freedom, as was recently the case with Heather Mitchell from Aberdeen, who fraudulently claimed £25k (over a period of four years) in benefits whilst employed as a contract cleaner on the minimum wage.

Mrs Mitchell, who was nursing her cancer stricken mother, put her hands up and accepted here fate, stating that her seven month prison sentence was fair and justified. What she couldn’t get to grips with was the fact that whilst she felt humiliated by the stupidity of her actions, only one out of the 7,000 suspected tax evading clients of the HSBC, was investigated.

So if they are all at it, why am I so obsessed with Maria Miller, as in fairness to her, she is just a number in a plethora of cross party expenses scandals and there are far worse examples than her.

Well, it’s because I live in Basingstoke and my representative in parliament is Maria Miller, someone who allegedly hampered an enquiry (known as the serious crime of perverting the course of justice to normal people) into mortgage interest claims. She also over-claimed interest on what was at best, a dubious second home, then lied about it, before, eventually, offering a condescending and bitter apology in parliament and paying it back.

The truth is that as a manipulator of expenses , Maria Miller wouldn’t even accept her wrong-doing and was obviously furious with the investigators, the public and media who shook themselves from their apathy to question her integrity, which was at best dodgy and at worst, worthy of a hefty prison sentence.

Yet as it stands, Basingstoke still has a highly dubious MP,  although she will continue to dress it all up as a genuine mistake. Not only a dodgy, but someone who refuses to answer questions at a local college unless they suit her. Is this a democracy or a total piss take out of the masses?

As a resident of the town I hate being represented by her and so should everyone else, no matter what side of the political fence they sit.

I have said this before but sod it, I will say it again…if anyone reading this post claimed interest on a mortgage as an expense from their employer and then continued to claim the same amount of cash despite a major drop in the interest rate, they would be in serious, serious trouble, probably resulting in a custodial sentence and certainly the loss of employment and a reputation in tatters.

Maria Miller did that to her employer which is, in effect, her tax paying constituents, yet somehow, she still represents them in parliament and gets paid £67k plus expenses for her inflammatory behaviour and contempt for those who dared to question her activities.

When you pick up your voting slip and see the name Maria Miller on it, please don’t do it, your dignity is at stake.

As for lying in parliament, it seems bizarre that if you are caught lying in a British court of law you are in big trouble, whilst if you do it as an MP representing constituents it is okay?

Thankfully, some people are getting even more angry about this than me and as result, there is a huge campaign going on right now via the petition website, Change.org. You can vote by clicking here and unlike X Factor, Big Brother or The Voice, your vote will cost you nothing more than a couple clicks on your laptop or tablet.

You can also watch the documentary that instigated this call to action. It is called An Idiot’s Guide to Politics, presented by satirical journalist Jocylon Rubenstein, and it is available on the BBC 3 iPlayer here. I found it both informative and funny, which is good starting point to get people to re-engage in politics.

There you go Nick, I have got over my obsession with fraudulent history books and moved on to the host of allegedly fraudulent local MP’s of our current time.

Can I rely on your vote at the next general election?