As if our collective fury and cynicism hasn’t risen enough, we now have Sir Ian Kennedy to thank for taking it to that next level. What on earth do the government think they are doing by (a) appointing a Labour insider to the role of chair of IPSA, and (b) allowing him to make his first comments ones about not perhaps implementing all of the Kelly recommendations.

I am struck speechless by the madness, the foolishness, the idiocy of it all. And above all else, the arrogance of Prof Ian Kennedy to actually utter any opinion whatsoever until he has read and digested every last jot and tittle of the work done so far.

Finally, if this isn’t enough, he has the temerity to say that he thinks the work done so far wasn’t a ‘proper’ consultation. Excuse me? Where exactly does he attain the confidence to claim that he knows what a good or bad consultation looks like? In the light of the expenses horrors we have been hearing over the past months, does he not understand that we, the electorate, need to see an unequivocal acceptance of wrongdoing, whether personal or corporate, and the implementation of a regime significantly different from that of the present.

And not only that, but does it strike anyone in parliament, that the rules – whatever they are – stipulating what a consultation is supposed to look like, may not actually be the most appropriate way to consider the expenses claims of MPs and what true restitution looks like? Probably not.

Sigh.