It wasn't me!!!

I am sure that many of us have at one time or another been confused by official paperwork. Completing tax returns or claiming benefits or even applying for a simple tax disc for the car can be a minefield of jargon and doubletalk. However when faced with these problems, we as members of the public are responsible for finding out what it is we are supposed to do. We phone help lines, we read explanatory books, we ask around so when we send these papers back to the relevant people, they are correct. We understand the comment at the bottom of the form that says that WE are responsible for the information we provide and that WE are the ones that will be held accountable. What we are not allowed to do is blame someone else. For example, If one night I decide to stop for a couple of drinks on my way home and later I am stopped and breathalysed I don't turn to the Policeman and say "I asked the barman, if I was over the limit, he thought I was OK so I drove home" I know right from wrong. Driving drunk is wrong. Getting the blessing of the barman doesn't make it right.
Unless of course I'm a member of parliament. In which case I just find the nearest civil servant and blame them and that is what is happening regarding the current furore over MP's expenses. The poor darlings had no idea what they could or couldn't do so they asked the Fee's Office or more correctly the Department for Administration and apparently were all told that they could carry on claiming. So despite being responsible for the writing and understanding of Acts of Parliament these guys and girls are completely incapable of working out what constitutes an allowable expense without getting it checked by someone else first.
The question that comes to my mind is "Are these people stupid or criminal?" It is either or there is no third option. If you cannot understand a 66 page explanatory document, you are far too stupid to be sending the country to war or working out how much tax I should be paying and if you understood the document and still made the claim, you're a crook. Plain and simple. Stupid or bent, which is it?
What I would like to see are the notes regarding these conversations with the fee's office, let's see what is actually said and see if it really is just a rubber stamp because "We're all in this together" nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
We have reached a point of such moral relativism that even those whom we rely upon to make the right decision are happy to hide behind the words NOT the intent. Gordon Brown made a big fuss over major corporations paying little or no tax and vowed to close these loopholes, his moral indignation burning like a firework in the sky. The chairman of RBS gets a huge pension payout, perfectly legal and as per the contract, but no, our moral guardians are up in arms telling him to pay it back sayng that they will change the law to make sure these things don't happen again. But when they are found to be as venal but meticulous in their own dealings then it was because they were told it was OK and perfectly within the rules, no talk of retrogressive actions then.
Surely it is now time that they were all thrown out on to the compost heap where they belong and a new set of politcians sworn in, with a driver for each and a room in an especially built facility for the duration of their term in parliament. If I go away on business my company puts me up in the very cheapest hotel it can find afterall I'm there to work, if the hotel has a bar, a good restaurant, a gym and a snooker table thats a bonus but it's not a necessity.