Weighty issues

So the MPs expense claims fiasco is still making me chortle. I know it shouldn't, I know it's outrageous, but it's just so ingrained in their culture. I was reading today that when Gordon Brown became an MP in the early 1980s, their annual salary was a risible £15,000. Expenses claims were how they survived. Now their annual salary is £65k, but over time, they've all colluded in wiggling the system in their favour and the unavoidable, laughable sense that they've all been simultaneously busted is slightly gleeful. I do want it to change, don't get me wrong - I think it's a serious issue - but the idea that our tax money has gone on the following surely raises a smile:

Nick Harvey (Lib Dem) - £30 per month for Sky Sports subscription
Julia Goldsworthy (Lib Dem) - £1,200 for a rocking chair
Alan Duncan (Tory) - £598 for lawnmower repairs
Oliver Letwin (Tory) - £2000 for repairs to pipe under his tennis court
David Miliband (Lab) - £145.96 for a pushchair
Margaret Beckett (Lab) - £600 for a hanging basket
Andy Burnham (Lab) - £19.99 for a dressing gown
John Prescott (Lab) - £112.52 for repairs to a toilet seat

Andy's £19.99 dressing gown was particularly poignant - I feel sorry for him that he didn't splash out a little more and go for something a bit nicer. But the one that made me feel saddest was John Prescott's repair work. How broken could it have been, for goodness' sake?! And how much did the seat cost in the first place, that it was preferable to spend over £100 repairing it rather than replacing it? The correlation that will inevitably be made between the size of Mr Prescott's derriere and the cost of the damage was what made me wince. One of the worst memories of my life happened about ten years ago, when I weighed... quite a lot. I was in Miami to do an interview with some tiny American popstrel, and we'd gone up to the rooftop garden of our unbelievably swanky hotel to take some photos on the beautiful wooden loungers by the pool. It was a stunning, warm spring day, the weather totally different to the cold rain we'd been having back in London. I was already feeling self-conscious as I was probably about five times the size of the starlet, painfully white and uncomfortable in my summer clothes that hadn't been worn since the previous year. But then, as I tried to relax on one of the poolside wooden stools, I felt an unmistakable crunch occur beneath my oversized buttocks, and seconds later, I was on the floor, the seat of the stool in two pieces on the decking beside me. Of course, I laughed. There was no other possible response. But I remember being furious that it had happened. I was convinced that the stool had been on its way out, and it just seemed so typical and so unfair that it had been The Fat Girl who had been the one to tip it over the edge.

These days I'm no longer fat, thankfully, but I still find weight a fairly constant concern. I'm currently preparing myself for ten days on the beach at the beginning of June and gearing up for that initial reveal of myself in a bikini, surrounded by people who are already bronzed: a moment of unparalleled awkwardness. I'm doing my best to eat less and exercise more in the run-up to the event, but even when I'm not working too hard at it all, there's that fairly constant stab of envy as I see one naturally slim person after another eating pizza or doughnuts or biscuits without thinking. I just envy that ability to eat without analysis - to grab lunch in McDonalds or guiltlessly order a Fiorentina for dinner and have no guilt or repurcussions. As Eva's mum always said, 'They'll turn to fat,' but they will have had decades of carefree munching and they don't know how lucky they are.

But back to politics (and away from any discussion about buttocks, whether they're mine or John Prescott's)... I had class three of my six-week politics course last night. The topic was inequality and it was fascinating. I found myself agreeing with Napoleon rather than Marx - equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome - so my dad's fears that he's 'bred a red' can be calmed a little. But I still fear that, expenses scandal included, no matter how many scandalous truths are revealed about our governing system, the vast majority of people won't engage with politics because they simply don't believe that their vote will make any difference. The parties are too similar, the representatives are self-interested and the democratic machine is fundamentally flawed. How can we change this? I don't know. I am sure that some sort of parliamentary reform is vital, probably involving proportional representation, but even then, the extant political parties don't seem to reflect the national interests. And, worryingly, as I read in today's Guardian, the media won't change this: "What aspect of the restoration of trust in politics would be in the media's interest? The answer is no part of it at all." They are loving this scandal, they love discontentment, they love demonstrations that turn into riots. Good news is no news. In a country where the media, more than anything else, shapes public opinion, that's a fairly depressing state of affairs. And I can't even smother my sorrows by comfort eating. Bah.