THEY still don't get it, do they?

Maria Miller doesn't get it. She may have resigned as Culture Secretary but she blamed anyone but herself for her downfall.

David Cameron doesn't get it. He thinks if someone in his Cabinet does something wrong, the right thing to do is to give them a chance to 'get on with the job'.

Ed Miliband doesn't get it. He thinks people are angry at the government's handling of the Miller case, when they're actually furious at the behaviour of politicians in general.

I've no idea if Nick Clegg gets it. He might do, but most people gave up caring what he thinks about anything when he abandoned his principles and promises the second his nostrils picked up the scent of power.

The MPs expenses scandal just will not go away.

And the people to blame for that are MPs themselves.

There is no doubt things are better than when the scandal first hit he headlines in 2009.

But many MPs still find it abhorrent that they have to justify how much of your money they are spending on kettles and televisions.

The Miller case simply highlighted the way in which many MPs still think.

They simply cannot understand why people are angry with them. And when they are caught out they think they should be treated differently to the rest of us.

In any other job - certainly in the private sector - Mrs Miller would have been out on her ear.

But not in the cosy world of Parliament.

Let's just remind ourselves of the sequence of events in this case.

The independent parliamentary commissioner for standards investigated cleared Mrs Miller of false expenses claims. But the commissioner ruled she had over-claimed for mortgage interest and council tax on her family home and that she should pay that money back.

How much? £45,000. That's roughly twice the average annual income for Argus readers.

So did she pay it back? Of course not.

The commissioner can only make recommendations. The final say rests with the Commons' committee for standards. This body is made up of 10 MPs and three lay members.

Only the MPs get to vote. Funny that.

So Mrs Miller's mates looked at the commissioner's recommendations and effectively ignored them, ruling instead that she only had to pay back £5,800 and apologise to the Commons for her 'attitude' to the commissioner's investigations.

Mrs Miller wrote her cheque, stood up in the Commons and made the most mealy-mouthed apology you could imagine and the prime minister declared we should all 'leave it at that'.

Quite rightly, nobody did.

The public were appalled to discover that MPs were still marking their own homework. And the utter hypocrisy of having a Culture Secretary charged with implementing independent regulation of the Press benefiting from the non-independent regulation of MPs meant this story was only every going to end one way.

The last week has exposed a significant minority of MPs for what they really are - self-serving money-grabbers desperate not be accountable to the public.

Since the expenses scandal first broke in 2009, I have been a supporter and advocate of increasing the salary of MPs and ending the right to claim expenses.

It may not be a popular solution but it would clear the Commons of the stench of corruption in one fell swoop.

Give MPs a higher wage but insist that everything they do, and everyone they employ, is paid from that wage.

To me, it is the only way to treat a wound that will only continue to fester without radical surgery.

In the meantime, one final thought.

Maria Miller still owes us forty grand.