Will Self has said:
[S]itting MPs have managed to alienate the electorate all by themselves, by using taxpayers' money to clean their moat/change their light bulbs/boost their property portfolio. Frankly, I hope the lot of 'em do lose their jobs at the next election, we need some extremists in parliament, not fascists or communists - but men and women of extreme probity.
I agree with that last comment.
The professions need the same reform as well.
And it has to be said, there are some in the House of Commons already. And even a few in the professions. But we do need to hear them more — pointing out, for a start, that tax avoidance is unambiguously wrong, just as much as is claiming unjustified expenses.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
❓ John Locke says of the moral or natural law that we all (supposedly) subscribe to, ” …for the law of nature be plain and intelligible to all rational creatures; yet men being biased by their interests, as well as ignorant for the want of study of it, are not apt allow of it as a law binding to them in the application of it to their particular cases”.
Are the extremists then men who are prepared to be moral, are they so few and far between? It would seem that they are. We have the example of the bankers, the tax avoiders and now MPs. Has Thatcher’s dictum that there is no such thing as society and that only the individual matters really taken such a hold.
Moreover one has to ask how many of the outraged and indignant electorate might have acted in a similar manner if they thought they would not be found out (speaker Martin will protect us!)
Perhaps we do need a Hobbesean Leviathan to keep us all in check.
What’s wrong with communists? Marx is more relevant today than most neoliberal analysts.