Joyce McMillan: New expenses rules return us to an era when women's work was undervalued

AS A piece of perfectly designed street pageantry. the Remembrance Day service at the Cenotaph in London always seems in a class of its own. The whole event is striking for its beauty, dignity and restraint; for the bright stillness of the November air, the London trees in their autumn colours, the aching magnificence of the music, as the military bands play their way through Elgar's Nimrod, Purcell's Dido, the Last Post.

And as part of the national pageant, the leaders of our main UK political parties will be there as usual, alongside the Royal Family and the leaders of the armed services. They will stand shoulder to shoulder in a male phalanx, the three men who lea...