WSJ on UK MPs expenses rort

The Mother of Parliaments has always been, in truth, a lady of somewhat questionable virtue. Though the British like to think of their House of Commons as the very model of parliamentary democracy, its members, the elected tribunes of the people, have frequently fallen short of those high British ideals of decorum, dignity and probity.

For the British, by turns prurient and puritan, sex is the usual temptation. In the last half a century, the course of British politics has been diverted by tales of a Cabinet minister who fathered a daughter out of wedlock, a leader of a party accused of murdering a homosexual lover, a minister, who, press reports said at the time, liked to dress up in the uniform of his favorite soccer team while she pleasured him, and countless other lurid stories of libidinous excess.

With the extract above begins a WSJ article on the UK MPs expenses scandal. Adam brings this piece to his audience, because it is interesting to see this ghastly business from the perspective of a non UK viewpoint, especially as it does not seem to be getting that much attention, surprise, surprise in the NZ ‘media’.

After traversing the issues at some length the WSJ concludes:-

A corrupt system has finally been exposed. In the long run, politicians will have to behave better.

In the meantime, the scandal has left even the famously tolerant and unflappable British public dazed.

Shaf Mohammad Rashid, who sells newspapers from a kiosk in a subway station in east London, said he has always voted Labour. But at the upcoming elections, he says, nobody is going to get his vote. “I’m fed up with them all, to be honest. I’ve lost faith.”

Yet it as well to remember Thomas Macaulay’s quote:

We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.

There are aspects of this affair which bring this to mind, particularly given the self righteous baying for blood of certain sections of the media.

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