Parliamentary Expenses

[poliphilo]

You're never going to get into parliament without the backing of a party machine. And the party machines want people who are happy to run with the herd, think with the herd, do as the herd does. Sturdy individualists need not apply.

And so we end up being governed by people who have no political ideas or personal ethics apart from those of the herd.

Maria Miller is a typical specimen. She fiddled because everyone else was fiddling, because the herd regarded such behaviour as a perk of the job. She might have got away with it if she hadn't been so arrogant- or if she'd occupied a place a little higher up in the hierarchy.

She's not exceptionally wicked. The problem is systemic.

Comments

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I agree. I met somebody the other day who was encouraged to stand as the Tory MP for Henley on Thames by the outgoing Boris Johnson, when he left to be mayor of London. She told him she couldn't continue to send her kids to private school on an MP's wages. He told her that expenses could be used to cover just about anything: "everybody does it".

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Boris keeps getting away with murder...