Would you run under a bus if I told you to? (Politics)

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	Politics
Date:	31/05/09 (86 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Its nearly over for Labor...

Disadvantages: Cameron in...

The same cowardly MPs that voted to save the fox but incinerate Iraqi children are now grovelling for their jobs and wanting our sympathy, angry and embarrassed that we know what they have been up to. They have been caught with their pants around their ankles in their bedrooms with the curtains drawn, although as yet no one has a noose around their necks and an orange in their mouth. They have told it was ok to fiddle your taxes and abandon all their morals because someone on a committee said it was ok. Someone on a committee also said it was ok to bomb children in Iraq because you're not accountable and so it's not your fault. They just don't get what their job is. We invade Sierra Leon to keep the price of Jewish diamonds high yet turn our backs on genocides in Rwanda and Sudan.

We won't admit it but in a western democracy we quietly expect our politicians to our dirty work and for that they get dirty money, what we have been seeing all month in the expenses row. The British government has secretly supported everyone from Pol Pots Komer Rouge to equally brutal African dictators for everything from oil to the rare metal Coltan, only found in Central Africa under slave labour conditions, essential to make cell phones work properly, phones we soon throw away to get the latest model, little respect to the 12- year-old who dug up the Coltan for 12 hours a day or have his hand lopped off if he didn't. We are just as bad as our politicians whether we want to accept it or not, but the proles revelling in signing petitions to get rid of the MPs to empower themselves and puff out their chest when interviewed on BBC Look East so admonish that guilt over those cell phones and the war in Iraq.

This public outcry over MPs expenses is not only getting wearing but it's somewhat hypocritical from the people engineering it-the media, devils for fiddling their expenses to a man and woman. Although there's a general anger out there it seems yet again class lines are decisive here in getting the MPs to stand down, Luton MP Julie Moran getting her backlash from the predominately unsophisticated working class voter, the plonker's on local news organising the petition not doing our democracy any favours, even though it feels great to see the MPs squirm. The middle-class vote was 50/50 on the rather fragrant Julie Kirkbride in the local Bromsgrove rag to stay, perhaps sympathising slightly with the vagaries of expenses and how easy they are to fiddle. Indeed it's a perk in well paid jobs to do just that. The point is there's nothing democratic about petitions, only those in favour of the debate usually signing them, as was the case in Luton. What we are seeing here is the undermining of our democracy by people like George Galloway's Respect party, his Astroturf activists (not grass roots) behind some of these petitions and media campaigns to remove MPs, moving from constituency to constituency to harvest the easy support. When you take this method too far look what happened in California, gay marriage outlawed by six votes in every seven, an irrelevant matter given huge status.

Clearly the rules on claiming these second home living expenses for MPs were deliberately ambiguous so they could exploit those rules and bump their salaries up, salaries kept well below the going rate by the same angry general public over the decades, 69k not that big for a London salary, although they do enjoy one of the best pension plans in the world, bar the bankers of course! The reason this expenses model was chosen was to placate the angry public and the members of parliament over salary increases, one group all too well expecting this day to come but only planning their lives five years ahead, the election cycle, so no surprise they milked it while they could. The big question is would we do the same? I mean any of us could feasibly be elected and I think most of us would if it was within the rules. Ester Rantzen certainly would have in Luton if she had stood and one, the only attraction of the job. But the duplicity of politics allows the voter to have a go at their MPs and be a hypocrite over any issue they like because they, the tax payer, pay their wages. To be honest I'm just as irritated at the outspoken protesting public as the thieving politicians. This is a witch hunt to sell copies of the Telegraph and not some sort of revolution. I do feel those who committed fraud by claiming cash for mortgages they didn't have or houses they didn't need to dodge tax should be prosecuted by the police, as we would be, as should the people in the fees office who signed off on obvious fraud. But I don't care about swimming pool leaks and broken toilet seats and we need to move on.

I'm certainly not defending MPs and because they are employed on moral grounds and to carry the will of the people, they certainly shouldn't be spending our money on 'duck islands' if they want to keep our respect and their jobs. A lot of Tory MPs are well off already and really don't need to be cashing in on expenses. When it came to the MPs moral choice of should I take this money when I don't need it...well some 100 MPs got greedy and I think it would be cool if all expenses claims should be allowed to be printed on each others party election literature next year and let's decide at the ballot box if we feel they were taking the piss or not. Let's not let this hamper our democracy all summer.

It's a shame about Julie Kirkbride as she is by far the best looking female MP out there but once it was discovered that her vanity had come into her expenses claim and she had spent a grand of our money on sexy photos to reassure herself she was still pretty a 45, that was that with the electorate, especially in these tough times. As far as Margaret Moran goes In Luton I'm rather surprised they turned on her so quickly because their biggest earner is the car industry that has seriously been over producing and losing money in the last five years and will need to survive on similar public handouts to hers over the next three or so years, the coming GM collapse what she should be working on for them. I'm not saying your average voter isn't bright but again, why don't they wait until the election to get rid? The answer of course is the debate would have changed and they would have forgotten it. The Poll Tax debate sand riots were real democracy in action and that's the way it should be done.

The next phase of this is MPs second jobs, far more sinister, being employed by big companies and lobbyist who expect something back from MPs for their money. The reason the Torygraph may hold off on this one is most of the MPs and Lords raking it in this way are Conservatives, for me a far more serious threat to our democracy. How would you feel if you know just how many MPs take money from arms companies and then vote on going to war? Did you know the Church of England has huge shareholding in arms companies? What about people like Kenneth Clarke who take five figure salaries from tobacco companies to promote the cancer sticks in the Commons? Tony Blair had a consultancy job with BP when he was PM and discussing the attack on Afghanistan, the country now enjoying $5 billion of investment from the Kazakhstan to Pakistan gas pipeline projects (yep that's why we are stirring in North Pakistan guys!). To me politicians should have one job only and not be influenced by outside voices that are paying them for access. Why are they allowed more than the one job? Are these jobs and the expenses purely to stop them going on the take?
The worst of all this is the devious media brining up the BNP debate over protest votes. Without their coverage there would be no big BNP voting patterns. The opposition parties then get to win back the votes they could have lost to the BNP by standing on anti BNP policies and tag-lines. Few agree with the BNP as a party and white people's anger over BNP issues like immigration, crime, pregnancy rates and council house priorities will see that vote go to UKIP, the real right-wing danger in the U.K...

Summary: Pigs and troughs...