Jeremy Seabrook wibbling in the Groan tries to pass the buck for MPs’ expenses onto… wait for it… us.
The anger at the grotesque and irresponsible expense claims of MPs is, to some degree, artificial, for who does not enjoy a good bout of moral righteousness?
It is not artificial. Ordinary people who made claims such as those made by MPs would be investigated for fraud. Out of pocket expenses are perfectly appropriate – claiming back monies spent in the conduct of one’s business. However, wholesale property speculation made at the taxpayer’s expense is another matter entirely – the outrage we feel is perfectly proper. These people have been troughing at our expense. I am painfully aware of this when I go online and hand over a four-figure sum every six months. I am paying for this free-loading, so my anger is real and justified. Do not attempt to excuse this behaviour in any way, you loathsome little apologist.
The theory that MPs now represent no one but themselves is perhaps less true than we might wish. They are not alone in taking advantage of rules of such moral flexibility that few people now seem able to distinguish between necessary expenses, fiddling, or just emolument for services performed.
MPs do represent no one but themselves – and how dare you, how bloody dare you try to accuse me of moral flexibility. I claim exactly what I have spent and not a penny more. To do otherwise is fraud – a criminal offence and is deeply unethical. I do not and never have fiddled my expenses you snivelling little creep, so do not presume to compare me with the corrupt, stinking cesspit that is our collection of representatives.
The culprit is not so much the faulty “moral compass” (that sole defective mechanism in a world of perfect technology) of those who guide and lead us.
That is precisely what it is.
The problem is deeper. If not even the very rich can now identify how much constitutes “enough” to provide for their lives, however showy and flamboyant, they are merely reflecting the compulsions of an economy for which anything but perpetual growth and expansion spells instant death. To grow is to exist: an organic metaphor taken from nature by the very system which has for two and a half centuries been dedicated to exploiting and suppressing it. In other words, the bounds of what is sufficient, both for economies and individuals, have been stretched to the vanishing point. This abolition of limits means there can never be enough of anything to go round.
What utter fucking twaddle. I am well aware what constitutes “enough”. Indeed, my recent self-imposed exile to France means that I am rationing just how much I work and therefore how much I can earn. I’ve worked out what is “enough” and work sufficient to reach that amount. After which, I work no more until the next financial year. So do not assume that we fit into your warped, socialist view of the entrepreneurial spirit. None of this, however, excuses the MPs who felt that troughing at our expense was okay as it was “within the rules” – even if deep down, their conscience told them that the rules were wrong. When I detect that the rules are wrong, I do not go along with them. It’s called being responsible. You know, that quaint old fashioned idea; personal responsibility.
We are all familiar with the dominant ideology – the fallibility, frailty and weakness of human nature, led so easily into temptation, fallen, venal, selfish and greedy. If money has been elevated and humanity consistently depreciated, who is to blame?
If you do not know the answer to that question, you are as bad as the MPs who merely “followed the rules”. Each of us has the ability to discern right from wrong. If I can do it, so can you, so can MPs. It isn’t difficult.
It is no good turning on hapless MPs, or bankers, or the ingenious legal minds whose formidable brainpower is dedicated to helping the richest people on earth avoid paying their dues to society; let alone the pitiful cunning of benefit cheats who milked pennies out of an ungenerous public purse.
Yes, it is.
There are, perhaps, no innocent bystanders, yet many are ready to cast the first stone at the crooked and self-serving. Perhaps, after all, our MPs represent us more than we care to admit.
They do not. And I resent the implication you make here that I or anyone else is as crooked as these people. How dare you try to defend the indefensible, how dare you!
This is why the indignation of the unforgiving media and the vengefulness of the public have reached such a paroxysm.
Er, no, it is because the public, by and large have been unaware and the media have been complicit with Westminster with its selective reporting. If anyone else other than MPs is to blame it is you the MSM, the ragbag of morally deficient newspaper journalists sucking at the teat of the Westminster village.
It may be that the source of the evil is not out there, in the sinister minds of MPs, but lies closer to the virtuous rage and excitable fury of those now making the loudest noise about it.
No it does not. It lies exactly where it appears to lie; with the MPs who took without questioning the ethics of so doing and it lies with toadies like you who try to pass the buck onto the victim of this fraud.
I have been here often, and most of the time agree with your positions. You frequently make valid points, and ones that had not occured to me.
Sadly, however, I could not bring myself to finish that post. I take my hat off to you, not only reading that nonsense, but for fisking the wretched thing.
That has to be the most offensive piece of drivel I have ever read – and coming from the Groan, the competition is pretty rigorous. I should go and have a lie down.
Exactly:
‘…perpetual growth and expansion…an organic metaphor taken from nature by the very system’ that we are also speaking of when we mean /cancer/.
The writer’s words are a fine example of the absolutely murderous double-meaning in everything said and done without moral consciousenss, or still worse suppressed morality.
Mr Seesevilallovertheplace means to arouse us to a sense of guilty complicity — but, the effect is a paralysing inertia in the individual who is then misled to feel overwhelmed by the insane bigness of it all.
First and last, it is a question in every case of the individual response to the questions asked by Life.
The article had me spitting blood. I do not accept the “within the rules” excuse. Nor do I accept Seabrook’s apology for MPs. The rules are immoral, therefore a moral, honourable man would decline to go along with them – it’s called personal responsibility. The very idea that taxpayers are somehow responsible is offensive and insulting. I worked bloody hard for that money, I did not hand it over so that these leeches could line their wallets at my expense. To suggest that I have any culpability whatsoever rubs salt in the wound.
Seabrook writes “There are, perhaps, no innocent bystanders, yet many are ready to cast the first stone . . .”
Apart from the assumption that everyone has or will fiddle their expenses if they get half a chance, there is another fallacy in what he says – the argument that nobody is perfect, so we shouldn’t criticise others.
There are a handful of well known quotations like “let him who is without sin cast the first stone”, and “judge not that ye be not judged” and “Never criticize a man until you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins.” These are not universal principles, forbidding criticism, but are applicable in certain situations.
If one makes them general principles, then it is not just our MPs that we cannot criticise – it is people like Hitler and Stalin as well.
Those quotations are appropriate for normal human failings. They do not apply to blatant unethical behaviour. We are perfectly entitled to criticise MPs for failing to exercise personal responsibility – after all, they make laws that bind us, so should be beyond reproach in their own behaviour.
Actually, not for the first time, you’ve got the press and broadcast media bang to rights. Hardly a mention of Alan Johnson, Hillary Benn and the other stars of Tories and Lib Dems who haven’t been troughing away. They must have known when to stop.
Over here, the idea that a leading Tory had his Moat cleaned out at our expense seems to have captured the popular imagination. Doorstepped and asked to explain, he said (I thought quite reasonably) that he submitted his entire schedule of works to the fees office along with a separate letter detailing what he was claiming for so that the fees office could better judge the extent of his claim against his personal contribution. He had paid for the moat cleaning himself.
Whilst I don’t accept the premise that I should pay for any of his household maintenance, especially as a tax-free gift he did at least seem to have a small point about what happens when the media gets carried away.
On the whole I agree, though – and I don’t do fraudulent expenses (or indeed fraudulent anything for that matter). Unfortunately, there are plenty among friends, acquaintances and work colleagues past and present who see me as some kind of quaint old fashioned bloke locked in the past.