Check out the Department of Social Development's website any week and you'll find statements from Ms. Richie expressing delight at the number of citizens being hauled before the courts for benefit fraud. The website invariably gives their names and addresses, in case their neighbours and workmates don't know.
Nothing redacted. No effort to hide any detail or black out personal information. But then, the people being pursued by Ms. Ritchie's snoopers aren't MPs.
Very few of the "benefit fraudsters" whom Ms. Ritchie seems determined to expose and punish were looking to install jewel-encrusted chandeliers in the living room or caviar-flavoured soap in the shower. And the vast majority aren't charged with scamming anything like £1,500.
I don't doubt for a minute that Mark Durkan made an honest mistake when he accepted £1,500 in living expenses which he wasn't entitled to. Irrespective of political differences, I have always found him honest and above board. I am sure he was surprised and embarrassed when the overpayment was revealed and that he handed the dosh back with good grace.
But what do you think the chances would be of a person dragged into court by Ms Ritchie's department being believed if they pleaded that it had all been a dreadful mistake, that they hadn't noticed the extra money in their pockets until now and were willing to pay it back and let's all forget about the whole miserable business?
And yet you can hardly turn on the television these days without being confronted by MPs prostrating themselves before us in sorrow at their 'mistake' in charging for papyrus notepads in calf-skin covers under the heading of 'stationary'.
No fewer than 50 have stung the taxpayers for council tax - in some cases council tax which they hadn't paid in the first place. Meanwhile, councils across Britain threaten tougher action against citizens who don't pay their council tax on time. If this isn't ground for fetching out the pitchforks and pikes and marching on London, I don't know what is. Where are you, Watt Tyler, now that we need you?
Back home again, scarce had we recovered from the news that Iris and Peter Robinson were enjoying a life-style reminiscent of the medieval papacy when it emerged that Cardinal Paisley had been claiming £400 a month in 'food expenses' in London while serving as First Minister at Stormont. Must have been scoffing sweetmeats and haute cuisine and indulging in blow-outs, banquets, bean-feasts and féte champétre on his infrequent visits to the Smoke. Who'd have believed it? At his age, too. Isn't it a wonder he didn't burst?
Which reminds us - and we in turn again remind Mark - that Eddie McGrady seems to have been a match for most of his colleagues when it came to inserting his snout into the trough. For one eight-day period, the man from South Down put in a bill for £1,562 for food, £184 for telephone calls and £826 for "laundry, sundries etc".
That's £198 a day for grub. No wonder Eddie looks like he could lose a few pounds. Although not as many pounds as the rest of us were losing to keep him in the manner to which he believes he's entitled to become accustomed.
On top of the £189 a day food bill, in the same period Eddie asked the taxpayer to hand him more than £100 a day for those laundry and sundries. (What are "sundries" anyway? Anything to do with sundried tomatoes? Must ask Ian the Epicure.)

Cryptic answers from Sinn Fein

Then there's Sinn Fein. They appear to be the only party involved which has had the sense to offer only cryptic answers to media questions and otherwise to keep the lip buttoned tighter than Willie McCrea's mind.
Sinn Fein maintains a house and a flat in London for use by their MPs when visiting Westminster. In keeping with their manifesto, they don't actually attend the Commons. So, what business do the five SF MPs have to conduct in London which couldn't be conducted as efficiently by email, telephone or video-phone? I think we should be told.
Why do they need a flat and a house kept fully furnished and serviced and ready for occupation at all times? We should be told that, too.
The SF MPs are paying (well, the taxpayer is paying) £3,600 a month for the flat, which estate agents say is worth £1,400. And £5,400 a month for a house for which, say the experts, a fair rent would be £1,800.
Who set these rents? Did Sinn Fein have professional advice when they negotiated the leases, like any person with a modicum of common sense? How does the party justify an arrangement whereby a landlord who is a party supporter seemingly collects £5,800 a month over and above the going rate for the properties concerned. That's £1,400 a week in straight profit for doing nothing at all apart from being a property-owner? In a different time and different circumstances, Sinn Fein members might have been picketing the offices of a rack-renter charging tenants such exorbitantly over the top sums. So, what's going on?
Sinn Fein MPs don't appear to have benefitted personally in the same way as MPs from Labour, Tory, Lib-Dem, DUP, SDLP etc. But there is something amiss here that requires explanation. When others are being pursued for explanations, the equality agenda demands that Sinn Fein, too, be required to come clean.
It's widely remarked that Sinn Fein won't suffer because their supporters have no problem with the Brits being ripped off. But taxpayers here too are being stung for the expensive grub, ludicrous laundry bills and inexplicably excessive rents which NI MPs have shamelessly been claiming for.
Phrases such as "all in it together", "one's as bad as the other", and "a pox on all their houses (and flats)" come to mind.