What's so bad about a second job?

OK, it's not the salary Wayne Rooney would even bother to lace up his boots for. But it's still not a bad whack.

It all seemed to stem from the sting on former foreign secretaries Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw over 'cash for access'.

Labour will ban all its MPs from second jobs.

Is that really necessary, though? What Sir Malcolm and Mr Straw are accused of is using their positions as MPs in return for money. Both deny any wrongdoing.

And that's rather a far cry from what MPs in the West Midlands do.

Aside from a few hundred quid here and there for appearances on TV and radio programmes, those who make money on the side do it in the professions they held before they became MPs.

Stone MP Sir Bill Cash, for example, made a tidy £25,000 doing 70 hours work as a solicitor.

Stafford's Jeremy Lefroy made considerably less money doing a few more hours in the African coffee, cocoa and management services company of which he is a director.

Some MPs have a few shares. Others rent out a property here and there.

It's not exactly the 2009 expenses scandal is it? But we know about it because the rules require them to declare all this in the Register of Members' Interests.

Ultimately MPs have to make sure they do their duty and serve their constituents.

But is it any worse doing a bit of work here and there when Parliament's in recess when compared with being a minister?

After all, those MPs carrying the red boxes and getting driven around in the Jaguars still have constituencies just like the backbenchers.

There's another reason too that I'd rather see people like Sir Bill and Mr Lefroy keep their hand in with their businesses.

For a start it means they keep up their experience outside of the Westminster bubble.

There are enough MPs as it is who have been career politicians - going from university to some form of advisory role and then on to a candidacy - without limiting even further the things they can do.

And with an election looming, if an MP in a marginal seat severed all ties with their old business I wouldn't think they were dedicated, I'd think they were mad.

Does life imitate art? You might very well think that, I couldn't possibly comment

I'm going into self-imposed exile this weekend as the third series of the American version of House of Cards has been made available on Netflix. Unlike normal telly, all the episodes are available at once. So I'm going to be forgetting about the plotting, planning and scheming in the Commons by watching the plotting, planning and scheming in the White House.

Michael Fabricant, the Tory MP for Lichfield, was an adviser on the original 1990s British series and even appears in the last series, The Final Cut. So he'd know if it was true to life. "There's probably a grain of truth in it but I don't think we're quite as ruthless as bumping people off," he said. "Or let's put it this way, I haven't found out."