WE have to accept that the allowance claims of Government ministers Jacqui Smith, Tony McNulty, Geoff Hoon, etc, are legal. Legal, but unethical. I mean, working the system when millions of ordinary people are losing jobs, homes, savings, etc – it stinks, doesn’t it?.

So, if what’s legal is sometimes unethical, maybe what’s ethical is sometimes illegal? Yes, it is.

Examples abound. How about the situation in the English countryside in the early to mid-1800s when poor people often had to break the iniquitous anti-poaching laws or watch their children starve?

What they did was brave and honourable, but its illegality was promulgated in the savagery of the punishments they incurred when caught.

Does this mean we can please ourselves which laws we obey?

No, but it certainly reinforces that true adage: there’s one law for the rich (and powerful) and one for the rest of us.

Tony Kelly, Crook, Co Durham.

AS the matter of MPs’ pay and expenses rumbles on and on, it makes one wonder if Guy Fawkes had the right idea all those years ago. Just a thought.

Malcolm Neesam, Thirsk, North Yorkshire.

I NOTE Ian Sadler’s comments about the disgusting situation in which taxpayers now find themselves over MPs’ expenses (HAS, April 8).

I fully endorse his comments and I wonder if Darlington’s anonymous MP would go up to the Prime Minister, face to face, and tell him in no uncertain terms that this scandal is very important and needs sorting, never mind the PM trying to save the world.

A TV interview with the Home Secretary on Tuesday demonstrated to me, when confronted by the interviewer, just how disdainful MPs are of public opinion or any moral obligation. I hope the public and the media keep up the pressure.

Steve Hodgson, Darlington.