“This time there could be no mistake about it; it was neither more nor less a pig, and she felt it would be quite absurd for her to carry it any further.” This is from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and the British cartoonist Garland now shows Alice as The Voter and the Pig as a member of Parliament in the current expense scandal that has shaken England to its core.

You’ll find a succinct explanation of this problem in editor Graydon Carter’s column in the new Vanity Fair. And we have been writing about this scandal here since May 14. 

Economic and political repercussions from this matter of so many members of Parliament abusing their expense accounts are grave.

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There are two women in Hollywood – where women don’t count for much in the scheme of moviemaking – whom I admire greatly. These self-made producing, writing, directing beauties have taken the bull by the horns to make films on their own terms.

They are Jennifer Westfeldt, who created a movie role for herself in the underground hit “Kissing Jessica Stein,” and Nia Vardalos, who cashed in after she did everything but carry gaffer tape in her self-created Oscar-nominated smash “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” (If Hollywood won’t give you a tumble, maybe if you write your own material, you can break the glass ceiling. It has happened over and over. Look at Sly Stallone and “Rocky.”)

The other day I had a chance to visit with Nia in person as she is all over the place pushing her second Greek-girl hit, “My Life in Ruins.” (The wOw site’s Kristin Fritz has already done an in-depth interview with Nia, which I urge you to discover and read for yourself. But I have one or two things to add.)

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Nia, who is beautiful in the flesh, was laughing when we sat down about a big display in People mag where she told them frankly about the perils of women trying to get ahead in La La Land, about her struggle to adopt a baby girl and all about her latest  effort to cash in on her Greek heritage. “But they chose to show me as ‘40 lbs lighter’ and all they were interested in was ‘How I Took It Off.’”

Ms. Vardalos wants us to rush to her latest movie comedy about a Greek tour guide who falls for a man she can’t see for dirt at first. She was urging me to urge you to hit the theaters last weekend to give her latest some chance of a life. Says Nia, "Fox Searchlight has been very good to me but I feel I need to push on top of that because this is a movie for women and women need to support such. It’s a kind of date movie, but not a chick flick. I just feel women don’t know or realize their power. We were the first ever given the right to film at the Acropolis in Athens. And producer Rita Wilson and I were both made honorary cultural ambassadors, so if you get a parking ticket in Athens, call us!"

I wanted to talk to Nia about my pet favorite movie of hers – "Connie and Carla" – an effort in 2004 where she and Toni Collette hide out from gangsters in a drag-queen community. David Duchovny was the hetero love interest. Nia agreed with me that this offbeat comedy was vast fun, but didn’t really make it commercially. "As usual, nobody made any money and we cast all our friends in it." (Dear Reader: If you want to laugh, rent "Connie and Carla." It’s just a delightful blip in the Nia Vardalos canon.)