After the exposure and the lies, the excuses and the ‘business as usual’ attitude, we are told that only four broke the law. Only four were stupid enough to actually get caught. The rest get slapped wrists or a golden handshake, happy wanking their golden pay-off from the backs of the taxpayer, now viewed as a bottomless treasury for Labour’s ballot fund.
This Parliament is a sump, a slough, a slurry pit which does not even have the decency to develop an upper crust to disguise its foulness. You cannot drain this away as the swine have developed a taste for speculation, peculation and entitlement. And worse than the poor suckers of dole who know no better, their entitlement is a result of greed, not Special Brew.
How can an electorate inoculate ourselves from those who would wield power? In days past, this was the result of a tie: the contractual ties between governed and governor enriched by the fear of riot, the joy of bribery and an indecent sense of superiority over the occasional war: such are the advantages of a rising power. Even thirty years ago, our greatest traitor, Heath, was tested and sent packing when he had the temerity to ask “Who governs Britain?”
That crisis of governance may be more important than we know. Fifteen years of turbulence may have taught some that it is better to dilute the power of the demos, and transmute rage to apathy, gold to lead. And what better vehicle for this inoculation arose than the European Union: a new structure that observed the norms and the forms, but rendered each voter more impotent than a castrati in a Nevada brothel.
So when I say “only four?” I know that their fellow politicians will look on them as sacrificial lambs, thrown to wolves now and rescued later through sympathetic parole boards and glowing character references from fellow peers.
Good post title. I thought it’d be about exactly this. I completely agree with you, of course.
4 > 0. politicians almost never get prosecuted for breaking the rules.
Where’s Guy Fawkes when you need him?
Why worry about Guy Fawkes? I know the old joke- ‘He was the only person to enter Parliament with the right idea in mind”, but the plot failed! Don’t we need a new Cromwell?
If a file goes to the CPS it does not mean anyone broke the law. It means the police think they have a case with a chance of success.
For all the public outrage about it, about the only way an MP could break the law by a claim for a tax-exempt parliamentary allowance (despite the cliché, the claims people have been outraged by are not “expenses claims”) is if they deliberately lied to the Fees Office in order to get it. The only way a prosecution would stand up is if there was clear documentary evidence of that.
That the public are scandalised by your actions is not in itself enough to prove criminal charge against you in this country, I am very glad to say. There is an offence of “outraging public decency” – though there shouldn’t be – but actual public outrage is irrelevant to its limited application.
At first glance I thought you were talking about the East Anglia CRU.
The fact that “Only Four” are deemed to have broken the law reveals that the law itself is at fault, surely?
Croziervision has this letter from The Times, March, 1906.
Sir, – The admirable article in your issue on the proposal to pay salaries to members of the House of Commons recalls to mind a passage of John Stuart Mill’s book on “Representative Government,” which may perhaps interest some of your readers. After stating his main objection to such payment – viz., that “the calling of a demagogue would be formally inaugurated” thereby, he proceeds:-
“The occupation of a member of Parliament would thereupon become an occupation in itself, carried on, like other professions, with a view chiefly to its pecuniary returns, and under the demoralising influences of an occupation essentially precarious. It would become an object of desire to adventurers of a low class, and 658 persons in possession, with ten or twenty times as many in expectancy, would be incessantly bidding to attract or retain the sufferages of the electors by promising all things, honest or dishonest, possible or impossible, and rivalling each other in pandering to the meanest feelings and most ignorant prejudices of the vulgarest part of the crowd.
The auction between Cleon and the sausage-seller in Aristophanes is a fair caricature of what would be always going on.”
I am, Sir, your most obedient servant,
Athenaeum Club, March 9. W.S. LILLY.
He who forgets history is doomed to repeat it- someone said, and I agree.
We once had tyrants- William the Bastard being the worst- and eventually we found a way to keep governments within reasonable bounds. That job was finished in 1688. So long ago , before my grandfather’s earliest memories.
So people don’t know what it’s like to live under a tyrant- even my grandfather couldn’t tell me.
So people don’t see the danger and drop their guard.
Some things have been forgotten that should not have been forgotten.
This corruption is bad – but it is small compared to corruption in the United States.
The most corrupt man in the House of Representatives is Barney Frank and the most corrupt man in the Senate is Christopher Dodd. We are not talking about 70, 000 Dollars put into his fridge by some corrupt fool (although the fact that Democrat Congressman Jefferson has been convicted has been covered up by the “mainstream” media), it is a matter of MILLIONS of Dollars of campaign contributions and BILLIONS (now TRILLIONS) of Dollars in the financial meltdown.
This can be measured quite well – by the money they forced out of the financial industry (such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) whilst demanding (as chairman of the House and Senate banking committees) the wild lending policies of the housing bubble – and demanding that the Federal Reserve system provide the credit money for this “affordable housing” bubble. And then demanding (from the weak minded and ignorant President Bush) that everything be bailed out.
Only one man got more money per year from the financial industry than Barney Frank or Christopher Dodd (although he was only in Congress for four years) Barack Obama.
Yet the corruption of none of these men is exposed in the “mainstream” media – let alone punished.
Barack Obama is President – and wildly held up as moral example for the world.
And Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd continue to head the House and Senate Banking committees (and be respected figures – out on the talk shows, especially Barney Frank, and producing new statutes- as Dodd will next week) – with the myth being put about that “the Republicans” were in control before the 2008 elections (as if the 2006 elections had never occured – and as if Frank and Dodd were not the most powerful people in banking and finance even when they were not officially in control).
In comparision to all this – the vast scale of corruption and the total cover up by the “mainstream” media, British politics looks almost clean.
To give but one example:
Congressman Barney Frank demanded that Fannie Mae (the government controlled “private” home loans enterprise) underwrite (with the other government “private” thing Freddie Mac) the home loan market – and that the Federal Reserve system back it up (without limit).
At the same time he pushed for no standards what so ever in lending (to demand hard evidence that someone could pay back their loan would be “discrimination” you see).
As Fannie Mae headed towards meltdown Barney Frank repeatedly lied by claiming all was fine (when he knew Fannie Mae was heading for bankruptcy).
On addition to this Congressman Frank was engaged in sexual acts with the man in charge of Fannie Mae – the very person that, as Chairman of the House Banking Committee, he was supposed to be the independent oversight of.
How many of the voters know any of the above? Or that the policy has not changed – the Community Reinvesment Act is still in force, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are more involved in housing than ever, and the Federal Reserve system is pumping out more corrupt credit money than ever before in history.
Congressman, Senators and the President could take part in human sacrifice rituals in honour of Satan – and the “mainstream” media would not utter a word (and would attack anyone who did), as long as the politicians concerned were supportive of the ever bigger government “liberal” agenda of course.
Things have got that bad.