The political sense of a bucket of lightly-drowned weasels

[fivemack]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7420848.stm

"MPs could seek to avoid future expenses criticism by awarding themselves an automatic lump sum of £23,000 a year for second homes, a newspaper says"

"If a lump sum payment were made to each MP, the need for these documents to be produced would disappear and there could be a considerable cash boost for those MPs who spend less than the £23,000 permitted."

Handing out lump sums in cash to MPs is the kind of behaviour for which we tut and deduct at least three points when rating the governmental virtue of random countries in South America; what's next, black Mercedes? Is there any merit at all to the idea that important people do not need to provide receipts when spending public money?

If the issue is that MPs need second homes in London, would it make more sense to get Parliament to buy a random seven-hundred-room hotel, a class of building which London hardly lacks, and have them live there?

Comments

[del-c.livejournal.com]

When you're eighteen years old and unemployed, they seem happy to spend £23,000 a year paying someone to obsess over whether you're *really* looking for a job, or are just enjoying the good life on that sweet corrupt £23 a week. But when you're an MP, it seems your little feelings would be hurt if anyone queried whether you really needed that £23,000, on top of your large salary, to do your job.

Is this like that thing where if you pay poor people less they work harder, and if you pay them more, they slack off, but if you tax rich people more, they slack off, and if you tax them less, they work harder? The theory seems to be that rich people and poor people are two different species of human, with bizarrely opposite behaviour patterns.