While things continue to move behind the scenes, little will be forthcoming on the website. Blogging is winding down, exams are taking over. Activism is winding down, studies are the priority.
I will however pen a few of my thoughts concerning MPs expenses. I’ll make no excuses, it’s been a bloody disaster. Some MPs will have to resign and in a way they will deserve it. In another way they do not. Don’t get me wrong, they’re out of order, but humans are inherently imperfect and when faced with temptation few out of any group of people will be able to resist. But there is another aspect to this, let me set out the argument:
Imagine you’re an MP in the 1980s. You’re coming into the job, you’ve got a salary roughly equivalent to that of a GP or other well paid public sector employees. Now run it forward a few years. Your pay is not being increased. Your pay isn’t increased for years and years on end. However, now there’s these expenses. You’re not given pay rises, you’re given additional ways to claim for things. This continues for 25-30 years. Expenses rise, pay stays the same. Would you not eventually begin to see these expenses as a form of pay?
It has struck me throughout this scandal just how high the proportion of older (Conservative) MPs claiming ‘bad’ expenses has been when compared to the younger (Conservative) MPs. Is it the Westminster village attitude or is it the lack of any pay-rises that have lead to these views? I wouldn’t want to speculate.
However one thing I would make absolutely clear: Electing MPs from protest parties won’t make a difference to this. It will put a different person in parliament, but in the end human nature will stay the same. If individuals decide to stand on an ‘anti-sleaze’ ticket it might work, but the moment you get some form of movement or party standing for protest you also get the inherent dirtiness of human nature. Such are humans, and we would have to be raving socialists to think that human nature can be changed.
In the end parliament will be cleared up, this crisis has made it inevitable. Politics will be cleaner and will hopefully attract more people as a result. Hopefully some of the people sniping from the sidelines will now see the light and decide to do something about the issues they care about and get involved in politics. Politics will always involve the same people unless the public decides to do something about it. It’s why I got involved, it’s why you should.
Posted by Will Stobart 