You have to admire their humility
Ah, the whiff of scandal drifting across the Atlantic! Smell that? It’s the compost from the UK House of Parliament as the expenses scandal keeps hitting the fan. The right to be reimbursed for reasonable expenses should not be questioned. It’s the egregious abuse of the expense system that has the British Isles in an uproar. British MPs have expensed every they could possibly think of. Nothing was too small or too large, from the inane expenses of packets of biscuits and tampons to gluttonous extremes of house flipping and tax evading. The Labour party leadership has suggested the problem lay with the system (heaven forbid anyone be held accountable for their own moral lapses). They went further saying the MPs were simply not being paid enough and perhaps a pay increase would solve the problem.
Take Labour backbench MP Austin Mitchell as a fine case in point. Among his claims for asprin, lemons, ginger crinkles, you will find malt whiskey, security shutters for his home (although whether they are true security shutters is being debate), a $5,000+ redecoration of his secondary residence and a $2,136 reupholstery job on his sofas because they were “stained with Branston pickle, whisky, and gin”. As justification for his expenses he went on to say “It’s pretty hard work and can’t be done without allowances. Let’s have a sense of proportion and some common sense. We could start by understanding what the job is about”. Hmmm I think the public is saying just that – let’s have some common sense about the expenditures. The MPs are so afraid of spending their own money, they have no qualms about putting in for everything. The British public should be reassured that Mr Mitchell finds the entire expense debacle amusing and went so far as to offer to donate the old sofa covers.
And there in lays the heart of the problem. The MPs just don’t get it. They do not understand why the public is upset. To actually come out and say “Let’s have a sense of proportion and common sense” while demanding to be paid for every tiny aspect of your life, displays a marked lack of understanding of the problem. Perhaps a packet of biscuits or two wouldn’t be too much to ask, if consumed in the space of a busy work day, but it wasn’t just one or two small items – it was a continous demand to be reimbursed for everything. The MPs never entertained the notion their salary was for living on. There is an expectation the MPs (or anyone else for that matter) will spend their salary for rent/mortgage, food, heat, entertainment when it is personal and expense the extras that are required to do their job. House flipping, grocery shopping and sofa recovering does not fit the category of expenses.
With scandal after scandal rocking the UK, this may very well turn into a long, hot summer of protest if the MPs don’t remember where they parked their common sense and moral compasses.
