There is a new online hobby among the disaffected taxpaying classes. You go to dwp.gov.uk/benefitfraud, the government hotline for reporting cheats, and grass up Cabinet ministers. Particular pleasure, aficionados tell me, is to be found in the sections asking for nicknames, aliases, physical peculiarities and “does their employer know?”

Well, it relieves taxpayers’ feelings, and wastes no more public time than the daily toil of those in the Commons Fees Office, who spend their miserable days punctiliously striking out bathrobes and taking a view on Artex ceilings. And public rage is wholly justified. I have been trying to swallow the various mitigations offered in the expenses scandal, and I can’t. Sorry. Smooth voices say that it is unimportant, far less corrupt than Italy or Zimbabwe, that we must “make allowances” for “paltry” sums and not use chequebook journalism to embarrass lawmakers. Matthew Parris asks how any of us would like our housekeeping bills plastered across newspapers, and bravely admits to buying Lidl bog-rolls, iced buns, a hacksaw and cheap sausage rolls out of money from The Times and the BBC licence fee.

Yes, but Matthew, you earned that money! You paid 40 per cent tax on it, and the residue is yours to splurge on all the iced buns and hacksaws in Derbyshire with our love and blessing. Even if you broke two lavatory seats a year and had your llamas decorated with mock-Tudor beams, nobody would have a right to know. But MPs were being given all the money — by us. And even those abiding by the letter of the rules were often well outside the spirit. Several were Cabinet ministers. It won’t do.

As it happens, I agree with the conclusion that the only solution is a pay rise — weighted for distant constituencies — and the abolition of expenses. Moreover, I have nothing but contempt for the 1980s fudge-merchants who were so scared of visibly raising MPs’ pay that they twisted the system into such abuses as paying mortgage interest to enable members to scale the property ladder free, and permitting them to designate their “main residence” to maximise returns on the other. This culture of nods and winks and secrecy has undermined respect for democracy. Take off those sophisticated Westminster-media blinkers for a moment, and listen to the voices on the street, in the pub, on the radio — people are really, really angry.

Some of the voices are absurd — saying, for instance, that MPs should get the national average wage and live in hostels (one man suggested a cruise liner berthed by the Commons, which has its charm). But most are reasonable in their disgust. The self-employed — who are legion — are particularly irate that while they have to fight for every expense (not paid in full, merely allowed against tax) our lawmakers award themselves free £850 televisions and £651 mattresses, and we bought ridiculous fake beams for Mr Prescott and renovated Lord Mandelson’s constituency house when he knew he was about to leave Parliament.

Worse (we know this only because of the newspaper revelations — we were not going to be given addresses relating to claims, so it would have been hidden) MPs can keep “flipping” between which house is chargeable, and “churning” by selling properties renovated at taxpayers’ expense and moving. The luckiest of all live in grace-and-favour flats and let out the home they claim on.

Some of the expenses are fine. I accept that the poor Welsh Secretary should not be poached like an egg on his national rarebit by a defective boiler 145 miles from home. But much is dodgy. The rules are perfectly clear that anything claimed must be “wholly, exclusively and necessarily” paid to enable an MP to stay away from their main residence, that it must be “above reproach” and not enhance the property. Yet there seem to be few real remonstrances from officials (Margaret Beckett wasn’t allowed her £600 hanging baskets, though I seem to remember paying £190 for her rockery).

Why so few whistles blown and lines drawn? Why is it not routine for officials — faced with dubious claims and suspicious flipping of “main home” designations — to have a quiet word with the relevant Chief Whip, saying that an MP is taking the mick? MPs are terrified of Chief Whips: the whole nonsense could have been nipped in the bud years ago. My first conclusion, that the Commons Fees Office is useless, was modified by yesterday’s allegation that the poor devil who runs it, Andrew Walker , director general of resources, actually did try to tell the Speaker five years ago that claims were getting excessive, and was sharply told not to meddle and frozen out. If that is true and he is made a scapegoat, Parliament is even stinkier than it now looks.

This disaster has many causes. First blame the generations that set the rules by which MPs’ pay was secretively inflated. Then point the finger at the growing belief that the “political class”, however ephemeral and intellectually limited, should immediately on election be considered the peers of those with real professional success under their belt, and thus entitled by right to an upper-income lifestyle with no Artex and very big tellies. Then blame the triumphalist Blair years, when public money seemed so plentiful that it could with impunity be blued on vanity projects and half-baked, fast-forgotten initiatives. In those days MPs’ money probably did seem “paltry”.

But parliamentary democracy is in real trouble now. Since some (not all) MPs have played the system, people find it hard to believe that any of them are really there to serve their country. Worse still, the idea of personal honour is tarnished. Out here in the country there are legions of unpaid trustees, school governors and charity volunteers who understand that word better than many ministers.

I was a National Maritime Museum trustee for 10 years, drove 240-mile round trips six times a year to meetings, and didn’t claim the mileage more than once or twice: it was a good cause, I knew budgets were tight, I was not broke. That seemed natural, not even praiseworthy. There are countless better examples, often people on lower incomes than mine.

Yet now we all look up at the bridge of the national ship, and see that many of the officers’ eyes have not been on the horizon at all. They’ve been down on the floor, playing property poker in a smug, delusional fug of self-approval. We have invented “because I’m worth it!” politics. It will take decisive change to convince the country otherwise.

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