The HoC credit card – can’t get more transparent than that!

Shamik Das‘s Friday Fun / @shamikdas

I don’t know about you but I’ve been enthralled by the goings-on of the last two weeks; shocked, astounded, outraged and saddened in equal measure.

It feels like we’re all part of a game, participants in a reality show, tuning in each night to find out which Member of Parliament will be next in the stocks. Liberal. Labour. Tory. Nat. Whooooo goooooesssss? Andrew Porter decides!

Maybe it’s just me, but most nights over the past fortnight I’ve found myself glued to the BBC News Channel from about 8 o’clock onwards, waiting impatiently to learn the name of the next greedy piggy to be unmasked, hoping it’s someone I already hate, but fearing it’s someone I quite admire.

Amidst growing tension, anticipation levels rising, I often feel like a kid on Christmas Eve, staring at the Telegraph website on my laptop, half an eye on the non-plasma screen TV – not paid for by you – hammering the F5 key every couple of seconds, hoping for some morsels to be thrown in my direction as I wait with bated breath for the story to go live a few minutes before ten.

And then it’s the BBC Ten O’clock News, ITV’s News at Ten and Newsnight, watching intently as Nick Robinson, Tom Bradby and Michael Crick denounce the latest drove of porkers that’ve seen their careers flash before their eyes.

The following morning, the chance to lay one’s hands on a copy of the paper and examine in detail the largesse our rulers had indulged in. Including this morning it’s cost me more than £15, a pretty packet but a small price to pay for the disinfecting of our democracy, which surely must ensue.

So what exactly should be done to clean up Parliament? Here are some of the more outlandish ideas I’ve come across to reform the second homes allowance:

– A giant halls of residence where all 646 MPs can re-live their student days, at a thousandth of the cost and a million times more fun than scamming it, sorry scumming it, I mean slumming it, say, in your sister’s spare room in Peckham.

Surrounded, it goes without saying, by a moat, replete with helipad, duck islands and sit-in mowers, with Margaret Beckett manning the drawbridge in her caravan, screeching at passers-by that they “just don’t understand” why MPs should be allowed to fleece us.

Another idea could be to let them stay in their own homes but issue them with a House of Commons credit card, which they’ll have to use on each item they intend to claim for. As well as making them think twice about what constitutes a “wholly, exclusively and necessary” expense, but it’ll also enable us, in real time, to see exactly what they’re spending, as their purchases flash up online instantaneously. Can’t get more transparent than that!

And to deal with the problem of MPs making claims for “ghost” journeys – claiming for cab rides they never took – and driving everywhere, how about issuing them all with a souped-up Oyster card as well?! One that works not just in London but nationwide, on planes, trains and boats.

This would have the benefit of forcing them onto public transport, so they can see how the rest of us live, and, if all their journeys are logged on a website open to all, it’ll also give us the power to know exactly where the drift are at any moment in time.

What about their privacy you cry? Well, as Jacqui Smith is so fond of saying, “if they’ve got nothing to hide…”