The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

Tony McNulty row: MPs call for £40,000 pay rise – Telegraph.

They really don’t get it, do they? One of them is caught scamming the system and they demand a pay rise to compensate them for the fact it’s going to be more difficult to do such things in future. Before anyone protests, I think the word “scamming” is perfectly fair. Whether or not the system permits claims such as McNulty’s, anyone with a shred of morality would have known it was wrong. Indeed, McNulty himself (when detected) more or less admitted as much. He hasn’t quite said “It’s a fair cop, guv”, but in fairness to him he has not tried to defend his disgraceful behaviour.

Personally, I would willingly agree to give MPs a pay rise, if they were doing their job. They are supposed to be our law makers; free members of an independent legislature, not the poodles of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. They are supposed to hold the Executive to account. They are the peoples’ tribunes – the only protectors of our liberties under our weak constitution. They are supposed to clear the expenditure of taxpayers’ money in advance and then monitor that expenditure against budgets. They are doing none of those things and many of them appear to be moral degenerates to boot.

I would have thought many of them were too thick to fulfil their financial monitoring role, but the evidence is they can be pretty sharp when their own finances are at stake. Perhaps they should apply some of that to our money too?