The British government is going through one of the biggest upheavals in centuries. Members of Parliament are quitting, retiring, facing defeat in the next election, even possibly going to the klink.  And who is responsible  for this revolution in the mother of parliaments, the seat of democracy?   A young American woman!

Actually, 38 year-old Heather Brooke has British parents and dual citizenship.  But she was born in the states and went to school and worked in Washington and South Carolina before coming to the UK where she is now a freelance journalist.    In Britian in 2004, she got the idea to use a brand new Freedom of Information to find out what the British pols were writing off on their expense accounts.

After five years of struggle and court cases the news is finally out.  And its not pretty.    MP’s are writing off all sorts of household items supposedly necessary to do their jobs as representatives.   Including, er, upkeep of tennis courts and pools, a $4000 house for ducks, and of course (this is England after all), the cleaning of a moat surrounding a property.

Throw in even more serious fudging like charging for mortgage payments that were already paid up and fixing up places with expense money and  then selling them and you’ve got a scandal that’s captured the attention and anger of the British public for weeks now.   Already hit with big recession worries and suspicions about politicians and this just did it.

The only hitch for Heather is … she didn’t break the story.     The expenses which she was fighting to get revealed should have been made available this summer.   Instead, the Daily Telegraph newspaper got its hands on a hard drive with all the information on it and for a price made it public early. And got the glory.

Consolation for Heather though that she’s been  recognized for efforts.   She herself did a great documentary on British TV a month before the news broke and it revealed the whole corrupt mess.   Now she’s being interviewed and written about in all the British media.  She was good enough to chat with us and that’s included here.   As well as the story we did for Special Report on a typically wet and gloomy day ion London.

So check her out, log on to her great blog at www.ytrk.org, and sing her praise.  I promise you there are a lot of polticians here in England who are saying a lot of other stuff about her … mostly unprintable!

Watch the interview:

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Check out the full package:

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