When the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton, Sir Alastair Graham, Kate Hoey, MP, the online comment section with every article, the letters pages in every paper and our own Libby Purves all say, with one voice, that something is a moral outrage, then the conclusion is inescapable. Run for the hills.

Heaven and my editor know that it would be easy to concoct a crowd- pleasing piece in which I take note of how terribly angry the public is (yibble yabble), of how our politicians have let the side down (bibble babble) and how something, although I have no space to say precisely what, save that the Government should resign, the Speaker step down and the leading women members of the Cabinet be sacked, might be done about it. Blah blah.

Let me be “smooth” with you. Twenty-five light bulbs (or, rather, an electrician to sort out the defective wiring, but sorry, I may be spoiling the story), 20 grand on security, a bath plug, a boiler, a property “flip” that earns a grand, a shared cleaner, or even 60-quid's worth of wreaths for Remembrance Sunday, does not add up to “clawing greed”, constitute a “sordid culture of abuse” or justify the assertion that Parliament's “moral authority is at the lowest ebb in living memory”.

“We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality,” the historian Macaulay wrote about the reaction to a life of Lord Byron. “We read the scandal, talk about it for a day, and forget it,” he added, “But once in six or seven years our virtue becomes outrageous.” We're in the seventh year now, all right and with due respect to the skills of our cartoonist yesterday, even in the world of satire, drawing a direct line between Hitler's SS and the claiming of expenses by MPs should be regarded as a little hysterical.

But hysteria rules. They claim for the bath plug, and in the act of seeking recompense for such a small and essential item they show their incredible greed. They claim for a new kitchen, and in the act of claiming for such a large item they show their unbelievable greed. They earn money from other sources? They are part-time politicians, skimping on their role as representatives of the people! They earn money only from politics? They are professional politicians, cut off from the reality of proper jobs such as stockbroking (whoops, one of last year's examples got in there by mistake) and nursing.

They want a second home because their jobs are in two places? Tough! Who doesn't want a second home! Let them stay in a barracks! Or let them pay every penny themselves. Let them not profit if they sell, but take the full loss if prices drop.

Read this exchange, and tell me who is the moral exemplar. Margaret Moran, the MP for Luton South, on TV on her disgraceful claim for a second-home allowance on a flat in Southampton. MM: “My partner works in Southampton. He has done for 20 years. If I'm ever going to see my partner of 30 years, I can't make him come to Luton all the time, I have to be able to have a proper family life sometimes, which I can't do unless I share the costs of the Southampton home with him.”

A viewer texts in: “ARE THESE PEOPLE INSANE - DO THEY REALISE HOW THEY SOUND!! I'm so angry. I've been a single mum, working, holding down a job, paying my mortgage, my council tax and I don't have the luxury of asking the taxpayer to help me keep my family together.”

I am afraid it is the viewer who does not realise how she sounds. First there's the obvious point that the taxpayer probably has helped her to keep her family together. And quite right too, but there's no glimmer of empathy. Second, there is the almost punitive desire that MPs should actually have it bad. Not healthy, Sigmund, not healthy at all.

Myself, I fail as an expenses chiseller. Temperamentally I am the opposite, but I have worked in enough organisations to know that for every under-claimer there are five assiduous form-fillers and one ingenious expenses-artist. We all know it, don't we? Why do you think cab drivers offer you a handful of blank receipts?

This stuff is wearying. What I wanted when I was an employer at the BBC, confronted by Byzantine expense and overtime claims and a sense of grievance, was a clear, decent salary structure, and the minimum in claims. I wanted sufficient up-front to attract high-quality staff, and knew that I needed to provide conditions of service that helped them perform.

But what do I want as an employer of parliamentarians? So far, they have been very bad employers to themselves, partly because they are so scared of us, inhabiting a world of seething private defiance and pathetic public deference to our prejudices.

Suppose, dear reader (and this is a challenge), you and I were suddenly told that the new structure for MPs' pay was down to the two of us. Instead of fulminating or pontificating, we would actually decide. What would we ask ourselves?

Is this an important job? Was there any level of salary so low that it would deter all but the wealthiest candidates? Or so high that it would maximise the chance of attracting the best ones? Were there conditions that would make family life impossible? Perhaps MPs should be paid the same as GPs, plus a one-off second home payment?

In which case they'd receive a 30 per cent increase. Would that be so unreasonable? Perhaps we might conclude that fewer, better resourced MPs should be paid more, the amount settled by an independent review body with no appeal, that their expenses should be handled by an independent auditor according to clear and restrictive criteria, and should be as confidential as our own.

Then we could turn our attention to that other unlanced boil, party funding. We might reflect that there had never been a democracy without political parties, and that we either made their members pay for them (which is increasingy difficult as we don't want to join), allowed potentially vested interests such as unions and hedge-fund zillionaires to fund them or asked the taxpayer to bear some of the burden. Those are the choices and everyone knows it.

So far, so good. But then you and I would have to try to sell our decisions to a public that becomes intoxicated by its own outrage, that wants democracy but doesn't want to pay for it and whose preferred form of political engagement is tossing the rattle out of the pram.

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