In defence of MPs not publishing their expenses

[ciphergoth]

(Copied from a comment I made elsewhere)

Gosh, but my MP is quick. I read about MPs moving to conceal their expenses again, and was moved to write to him. But I only got as far filling in my address in the letter on writetothem.com and thinking about what I wanted to write when I got the reply. It went like this:

Dear ciphergoth,

Thanks for writing. It says here I'm supposed to give some guff about costs of documenting these things, but you wouldn't buy that and I wouldn't want to insult you with it. If you promise not to tell anyone, I'll tell you the real reason.

We spend absolutely footling amounts of money compared to the money that we control as MPs. We could be twice as profligate as we are and it would make no difference to the national spend at all. In fact if that profligacy made us 0.1% more efficient at our jobs, it would totally be worth it, because if we can save 0.1% we've saved all our salaries and expenses many, many times. But the tabloids care because it's not hard to make a reasonable expense sound unreasonable, and it's always a story, a story that takes our time and attention away from the things that really matter.

We wouldn't mind being as accountable as everyone else, but we know we're not going to get treated fairly, and frankly we don't need the bother. We thought saying all this out loud wouldn't work, though, so frankly it seemed best for everyone's long term interests just to bury it while we were fucking up the big stuff.

Your loving MP, Keith.

What do you think?

(NB in case it isn't clear, my MP didn't really write the letter above)

Comments

[pavlos.livejournal.com]

I think your imaginary MP friend is reasonable. There's a general fallacy about evaluating public/private conduct. Think of Bill Clinton. I was passing by his country not long after he bombed a medicine factory in Sudan, and also received a blowjob. There was a huge media campaign against him over the blowjob. Only a few people in places like Berkeley were angry about the bombs.

I think the fallacy is roughly as follows: The public looks at a powerful figure and correctly tries to judge them. They know from everyday experience how to judge personal conduct but frankly have no idea how to judge the actions of power, since that skill is not diffused. So the public tries to judge personal conduct with great severity, while ignoring the actions of power. The proper response from journalists and educators would be to teach people how to judge power.