As far as I'm concerned, our beleaguered Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's husband can watch whatever type of film he wants – it's just I don't really want to be paying for it.

On an embarrassment level, it is right up there with bitching about someone in a text or email, only to realise you've then sent that message to them instead of the intended recipient! Hideous.

But, fair play to "Mr Smith", he fronted up (no doubt with a big push in the back from 'er indoors!) made a full and frank confession to the blood- thirsty media outside the family home and that is the end of it.

Except that it isn't. While Jacqui Smith has paid back the movie money and admitted the claim was an error in the first place, all this toe-curling episode has done is to stoke up our anger about MP's expenses.

It has also reinforced the need for a an overhaul of the financial smoke and mirrors that permeates Westminster.

Hardly a day goes by now when we're not served up yet another example of how one MP or another is guilty of some morally questionable accounting, whether it is a second home allowance or some other expense. And each time it seems the revelations we read or hear about have not been as a result of a 'mea culpa' from the guilty party but the information's actually only come to light thanks to some good old fashioned, investigative journalism.

Most recently it was the employment minister Tony McNulty and his allowance for a property his parents lived in, just a few miles away from his own home. At least McNulty had the good grace to accept that, while he hasn't broken any rules, it didn't look good and maybe those rules need to be updated.

As a result of the growing public disquiet, even Gordon Brown recognises the need for action.

But, while his suggestion that the Committee on Standards in Public Life review the whole system is welcome, it won't happen for over a year and clearly that is no good at all. If many more MPs are outed for creative expenses (and believe you me there will be plenty) we won't have the patience to wait that long and will be marching on Westminster, demanding an instant and complete clear out.

Some of the stuff they get away with simply wouldn't be acceptable in most other walks of life.

What is perhaps most shocking of all though is how, without a hint of irony, many politicians justify what's going on using the "We're sticking to the letter of the law" defence.

Here are the nations' law makers, elected and paid by us, conveniently forgetting that, if what they're doing is not exactly illegal, some of it is certainly immoral.

What we know already is bordering on institutional corruption but then I guess that's what we get if we allow this questionable bunch to set their own rules.

First the bankers and now MPs operating in the shadows with impunity – what bastion of British public life is next I wonder?