Well, the Speaker has resigned. No, not Nancy Pelosi, but Michael Martin, Speaker of the House of Commons at Westminster. It’s seven-and-a-half centuries since Sir Peter de Montfort served as “parlour” of the “Mad Parliament”, and any office that’s been around that long is bound to have attracted its share of dodgy characters. Yet Mr Martin is the first Speaker to be forced from office since Sir John Trevor got the boot in 1695 after accepting a bribe of 1,000 guineas.
A thousand guineas? Ha! What a nickel-and-dime (or penny-and-farthing) loser. Mr Martin presided over a system which eliminated the need for bribes by allowing Members of Parliament to expense just about everything they could conceivably need – and a few things they didn’t: You’re supposed to claim only for items you use yourself, but Phil Woolas, Britain’s Immigration Minister, managed to get reimbursed for a purchase of ladies’ clothing and tampons. Perhaps he has some kind of novelty juggling act with which he amuses visiting dignitaries.
Those members less imaginative than Mr Woolas clean up by “flipping” (as it’s called) their primary and secondary residences, and letting the taxpayer pay the upkeep of the more expensive. You don’t even have to own two properties to get the state to pay for the “second”: The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, designates her sister’s home in London as her primary residence, and gets reimbursed for costs on her “second” and only home back in Worcestershire. The Viscount Hailsham, as his moniker might suggest, has distinctive property maintenance needs: He was reimbursed £2,115 for the dredging of his moat.
Well, before thou cast out the moat of thy brother’s eye, eye up the moat of thine own. So let’s be bipartisan. At the House of Commons, everyone’s on the take: old socialist class warriors, New Labour Blairite slickers, squishy Tory wets of no fixed principle, rightwing hardliners. John Prescott, former Deputy Prime Minister, claimed £112.52 for repairs to his toilet seat. Sian James was reimbursed 59 pence for a chocolate Santa, and Andrew Rosindell £1.31 for an order of jellied eels. Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams and four of his fellow Irish republican members refuse to take their seats in the House because they decline to take their oath of allegiance to a Queen they don’t recognize. Nevertheless, they’ve managed to claim over half a million pounds in expenses. Isn’t that the perfect job? You never have to show up, but they’ll still process your expenses claims.
And at least Gerry Adams & Co have as their stated aim the destruction of the United Kingdom in its present form. What’s the excuse of the Tories, Liberals and socialists?
For their constituents, the scandal is a rare glimpse of a central truth about politics in an advanced western democracy: A lifetime in “public service” is a lifetime of getting serviced at public expense. The salaries are small but the perks are unlimited. A few weeks back, while the Home Secretary was away and her poor husband was whiling away a quiet evening , he purchased two pay-per-view pornographic movies – By Special Request and Raw Meat 3 – which, upon her return, his missus promptly billed to the government. Most of us, whether we land a job at the local feed store, the dental practice or National Review, expect to have to pay for our own moats, toilet seats, chocolate Santas and screenings of Raw Meat 3. But being in “public service” means never having to say, “Hey, this one’s on me.”
There are local variations, of course. In the US, I don’t believe you can claim for repairs to the toilet seat at your second home, but then again, your second home might have come your way, like Chris Dodd’s Irish “cottage”, at an exceptionally favorable price. A senator gets between $2.3 million and $3.7 million for the costs of running his office. Tom Daschle’s plea in mitigation for his tax irregularities can stand for an entire political culture: It never occurred to him, suddenly returned to private life and working his rolodex for a little light consulting and speechifying, that things like chauffeurs and limousines were taxable benefits members of the non-legislating class are supposed to declare to the Treasury. After all, in Congress, that stuff is just the way it is: Declaring your driver would be as silly as declaring the air or the grass.
Do you remember the anthrax scare just after 9/11? I remember how shocked I was when I heard on the radio that 34 of Senator Daschle’s staffers had come down with anthrax poisoning. Not shocked that they’d been poisoned, but shocked that Senator Daschle had 34 staffers. Why?
You can say, well, it’s all a lot more complicated than it was in the 18th century. But isn’t that one of those chicken-and-egg deals? Do legislators now require unlimited operating expenses because government has become so huge and complex? Or has government become so huge and complex because legislators have unlimited operating expenses? Or to put it another way: when a “citizen-legislator” gets an office budget of $3.7 million, is it likely you’ll get small government?
The British public is said to be mad as hell and threatening to run as independent candidates up and down the land, which, in a parliamentary system, could wreak real havoc. We’ll see whether they learn the real lesson – that a permanent, professional, career legislative class is no friend to democracy. In a healthy polity, our representatives should be part-time, poorly remunerated, perk-free, and pay for their own porn.
from National Review
SteynOnline - A MOAT TOO FAR
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