The House of Waste

Passmore Edwards, the Victorian Philanthropist who's name will be found over the door of a number of London Libraries, and a greater number in Cornwall, was the MP for Salisbury from 1880 to 1885. After a lifetime of campaigning for social and political reform he found his time in Westminster a great disappointment. He called it the House of Waste and said that the role of a majority of MPs was merely to stand about waiting for the division bell so that they could follow the Whips directions into the appropriate lobby. Besides that, although many had forcefully campaigned at the hustings for reform, once in Parliament their thoughts were more set on climbing the social ladder, crawling to a peerage, as he put it, or forwarding their own commercial interests.

The events of the last 12 months appear to have shown the situation not to have changed one bit. Members of every political hue have been shown to be at Westminster for their own personal gain, or if not, it is probably because we haven't yet found out just what they are up to. At least it can be said that politicians of every political hue have taken personal gain from their time at Westminster. The excuse that their claims were in accordance with the rules is no defence. Any MP that can truefully say that he thought that it was ok to claim many of the suspect claims unearthed by the Daily Telegraph worries me. These are the people that we have permitted to take decisions that affect the lives of our servicemen in Afghanistan and the lives of all of us here in England. To think it is ok to charge the taxpayer for the costs of improvements at one house and then swap the designation of that house so that they could claim further expenses on that home just defeats me. And to tell the tax man that one home is your main residence but tell the Ministry responsible for the expenses claims a different story seems to me, at best, to be just plain lies. How can you trust any such person again? Some one recently said that we don't need a war on poverty, we need a war on Greed. It can only be greed that explains the actions of many of the MPs featured in the Daily Telegraph last year. Perhaps it is the fact that they mix with individuals who "earn" obscenely high salaries that has developed the greed within themselves?

With a general election on the horizon are we any less concerned that the next batch of wannabees will be more concentrating on public service and less on self service?