Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

So Gordon Brown believes "that the keystone of any reform must be to switch from self-regulation to independent external regulation". I believe that this would be a monumental folly. What he is saying is that the very people who are charged with running our country are not responsible enough to devise a remuneration system that is perceived to be equitable and fair. The government cannot and should not create a body that is independent and whose remit is to apply rules back to parliament. This is creating an entity that is above parliament. Who will it answer to? It clearly cannot answer to parliament because it is independent.
This proposal also removes accountability. I will have no say on who serves on this independent body whereas I do have a say (too little and too infrequently but that is another story) on who serves in parliament.
The allowances saga is but a symptom of the malaise that has infected parliament for the past forty years. A self-induced illness caused by handing power to the EU which has made its existence increasingly irrelevant. Creating an independent body to oversee MPs remuneration would be yet another step along the way to complete loss of sovereignty of government.

Nothing New Under the Sun

I have seen it quoted a number of times recently in various blogs, see here, here, here and here. I was thinking of using it myself but I have been trumped by no less an organ than The Sun. It is of course Oliver Cromwell's speech to the rump parliament which goes thus:

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd; your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse the Augean Stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings, and which by God's help and the strength He has given me, I now come to do.

I command ye, therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. You have sat here too long for the good you do. In the name of God, go!

Apposite, definitely but do we really need another Oliver Cromwell?