the bright side of the expenses debacle

Bah

An admission: the ongoing MP expenses fiasco makes me feel a bit queasy about being human, but greatly proud to be British.

For a start, the whole sordid business proves only what Og the caveperson already knew: that any person put in charge of the pot of dried mammoth snacks will be tempted to help him/herself; and many who are tempted will succumb.  And, of course, if there's a whole bunch of people put in charge of the pot, and most of them are dipping in, then nobody is going to snitch on anyone else, even if that bunch of hairy, grunting brutes (or, to keep with the analogy, cavepeople) are divided into opposing parties whose job is to serve society.  No, they're likely to support each other in the belief that what they're doing is harmless and even warranted - and let he who is without spin cast the first stone.

The truth is that we humans are really good at justifying our actions to ourselves.  Much as I'd like to think that, were I an MP and not an admin clerk, I'd have done the noble thing and paid for my own (say) solid diamond gazebo with caviar fountain, the fact is, I don't know how I'd have acted.  With the fees office telling me to take all I can, and my fellow politicians grumbling about the lack of MP pay rises and opining that expenses allowances serve as de facto pay increases - who knows?  I may not have treated myself to a moat, but I'd be probably typing on an iMac right now, and not on a PC that I have to start six times in the morning until it stops whingeing at me about my roaming profile.

Frankly, in a world where new turns of events leap out like Central Park muggers, it comforts me to know that our national news has the reliable backbone of the MP expenses shock-fest.  I enjoy hearing about all those embarrassing but innocent mistakes made regarding claims for extra houses, relative/employees, personal zeppelins, paper mache sculptures of Ozymandias made out of pensioner's savings, etc - though it's statistically amazing that no MP so far seems to have accidentally paid too much.  Politicians spending our money on second homes for pet cats who are also paid as secretaries: we're used to that.  What I want to hear about is a politician demanding more money, having accidentally paid for a load of stuff that could have been had for free.  But who knows what surprises still await us?

Some people have been angry over the omissions in the Government's own Freedom of Information disclosures, which lack the Telegraph's titillating candour.  Personally, I can live without knowing the details of rejected expense claims.  In all truth, I'm not sure there were any.

What makes me proud is that we live in a society whose overlords are currently squirming and apologising and promising to give back money.  Of course we know their hair shirts are fur-lined.  Of course the Tories are cynically exploiting the situation to call for a GE - fair enough.  Of course they fought hard to keep their dirty doings in the dark (and then turned rabidly on the Speaker who had, frankly, protected their interests).  Viewed in isolation from the rest of human history, it's a sorry spectacle, and it makes us Brits look like muppets.  But in the context of the long history of human governments, the whole affair is something of a miracle.  You'd need a bloody coup to get that sort of result almost anywhere else, or at any time.

So when Khamenei calls Britain evil and cites our money-grasping representatives as evidence, I am inclined to feel indignant.  I would like to answer that our parliament consists of humans of fairly typical moral composition, but that a confluence of factors is presently pushing our besieged MPs away from the corruption that probably typifies most privileged bodies on earth.  I'd probably add that we don't need to take moral lessons from anyone who sits chewing his gums approvingly while his followers shout genocidal slogans.  I'd perhaps also add that this libertarian society he so detests may be full of loose-living dandies, harlots and fans of 'pop music', but without freedom it is impossible to know whether even your own piety is authentic, just as without freedom of belief there is no authentic belief, which is why theocracies suppress both the humanity of their subjects and the very morality they want to engender. 

But he'd probably have hung up by that point.

He wouldn't hear me mention that our evil little nation's jobs market seems to be picking up rather dramatically.

Go, mighty Blighty!  Long may you continue, at glacial pace, to get your act together.