A quick Fiddle

I love the MP’s expenses row.

It is all so marvelously Victorian. And I imagine that give it another turn of the screw in government in another 50 to 100 years time, and we will be doing it all over again.

You see the whole point of our political system is that it is – in essence meritocratic.
Candidates do not stand with slogans that imply that they are just like us – they stand with slogans that imply they are just enough like ‘us’ to be likeable, but essentially better than that really.

If we thought that they really were just Jo Blogs from down the road, you can bet your bottom dollar that they wouldn’t get a single vote. Why? Because Jo Blogs from down the road IS just like you and me - and let’s face it – we are apathetic and lazy.

So we vote people into power, with the belief that they are above the norm, that they alone are fit to be running out country because of some indefinable quality that lifts them above the hoi poloi.

Unfortunately this indefinable quality has turned out to be arrogance. Perhaps confidence does make them more capable of government – yet is also makes them more capable of… well believing themselves more capable of government.

If they are allowed to believe this, then I image they could not for one second believe that taking liberties with expenses was wrong. After all – where it not for them, the whole country would be in chaos.

So when the rich were elected to power because they has money – they used their power to get some more. And now that the ‘worthy’ are elected into power they use their influence to have possessions worthy of them.

I can think of only two solutions either me or Joanna Lumley as an all powerful dictator.