A Special Relationship

The term "special relationship" used to be reserved for the diplomatic ties between this country and the USA - Churchill and Rooseveldt, MacMillan and Kennedy, Thatcher and Reagan, Blair and Bush and even Gordon Brown's pathetic attempts to tie himself to Barack Obama's coat tails - but now we learn that our MPs (all 646 of them) have a special relationship with HMRC. I am no longer astonished.

So that probably means, as Hazel Blears has already told us, that she has done nothing wrong by declaring one of her homes as a "second home" for House of Commons allowance purposes and as a primary residence for Capital Gains allowance. Apparently they fill in a special tax form far different from the one that mere mortals like ourselves have to complete. They don't pay tax on their expenses claim, unlike the rest of us whose expenses are subject to some rigorous analysis. 

I haven't tried to do this, but I strongly suspect that HMRC would not allow me to designate a holiday cottage in Devon as my principal residence if I were to sell it, thus avoiding the Capital gains tax that Hazel Blears happily voted for, knowing that she would never be called upon to pay it herself.