Story in today’s Guardian about smart meters:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/11/smart-meters-energy-efficiency?commentpage=1

It seems the Bill to force all households to accept a new utilities meter was a part of another scandal:

‘Whispered over tea and cake: price for a peer to fix the law’

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5581570.ece

So who are they really working for?

Credit for the linkup goer to commenter 1nn1t on the Guardian story.

We thus have to assume that local parties are apathetic, spineless or disconnected, none of which attributes encourage faith in the system by which candidates will be promoted at the next general election. So far, it looks as if a lot of local parties will need a lot of reconstruction when their MPs get the well deserved boot by the electorate.

if Labour were to very publicly excommunicate those who have been abusing the expenses system, if we were to deselect the corrupt bastards, and the Tories were not to do this, were to keep their corrupt bastards in place, who do you think would win the next election? Seriously, if we has a complete clean sweep of PLP, led by the NEC, we’d fucking walk it. It would be the only issue in the campaign.

Of course, there’s a very serious danger that we’d end up with a Labour government that implements socialism and actually improves things for everyone, rather than trying to be a compassionate version of the Conservative Party. And we could well be stuck with that government for ten, fifteen, maybe even twenty years, and perhaps see an entire generation of Britons living genuinely prosperous and contented lives for the first time since the seventies. But that’s a risk I’m willing to take.

“Make them pay the money back, sack the spivs who let them get away with it – and put the thieves on trial”

I endorse this message.

I’m sorry, but… I’m not interested in politicians cleaning up their act.

I want them to be held accountable – as criminals, where necessary. If the general public dodge tax, or try to fiddle benefits, they get hammered (this government even screened ads demanding we turn each other in, if we suspect wrongdoing).

And please, don’t allow them to hide behind technicalities. These are our elected leaders. They, supposedly, serve at our pleasure.

Why should politicians be allowed to say sorry, promise to do better, and keep their ill-gotten loot? If they do, why shouldn’t future politicians not be allowed to wet their beak? No, no, NO! Every claim that can’t be justified as wholly legitimate should be paid back. I don’t give a runny shit whether it costs £10m to investigate and claim back £500,000 – I WANT IT BACK.

Why are they so special, and why are their proposals so clearly designed to allow much of this to continue?

It’s not just Labour. Our politics – all of it – is broken.

Time for Hazel Blears to go

Yes – and Purnell.

Agree with you there, it is time.

Peter Oborne – who is way ahead of the Ashleys and Rawnsleys on all this – had some good proposals in Saturday’s Mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1179595/PETER-OBORNE-Make-pay-money-sack-spivs-let-away–thieves-trial.html

“Make them pay the money back, sack the spivs who let them get away with it – and put the thieves on trial”

That sounds about right.

‘but will constituency parties be brave enough (or allowed) to do it?’

They will have to. I believe this whole affair will reignite public interest in politics in a way the politicians could never do. Its a call on the sleeping membership or those that have been sidelined over the last decade to take up the fight.

I have a cunning plan to accelerate it beyond the electorate’s wildest dreams. Its in phases.

Phase 1: Let them unravel.
Phase 2: Watch them turn on each other. This will be in the form of reshuffles, and deselections.
Phase 3: Individual MPs issuing apologies.
Phase 4: A people’s truth and reconciliation commission dealing with expense claims, and list of lobby groups and think tanks they work for. This will also include outing of MPs responsible for the pressuring of the civil servants in the Fees Office.
Phase 5: MPs pay back excessive claims.

From start to finish, I estimate 6 months.

Moreover, the distributive goal you propose here – prevention/relief of misery – is a very weak one by social democratic standards (which is not to say it isn’t important). Hardly any conservative would object to it. Distinctively social democratic objectives are going to have to include some serious idea of equality of opportunity and some concern for inequalities in income and wealth that goes beyond putting a basic resource floor in place. (There are, of course, more radical and more moderate ways of fleshing out these objectives.)

So we have to consider what kind of citizen motivation is consistent with achieving these objectives. A motivation of the kind that some on the right suppose – strong selfish individualism – is very unlikely to sustain the institutions required to meet these objectives. People will vote them out as too restrictive on their own earnings aspirations. Or they might respond to high taxes in Laffer-curve ways that puts pressure on government to reverse policy.

So I do think that if one is politically a social democrat, one does have to reject the claim that individuals are, as a matter of basic human nature, selfish individualists seeking always to maximise their own income and wealth. People, on the whole, just have to be more solidaristic than that. And then it becomes reasonable to judge the behaviour of social democratic politicians on the basis of whether their own behaviour is consistent with rejecting a behavioural assumption they must, in all consistency, reject for society as a whole.

I largely agree with that. Though the comeuppance could be a bit quicker, hopefully.

An Italian-style Clean Hands campaign!? Let’s hope not….. or do you seriously want a clone of Silvio Berlusconi running the country in ten years time?

No, I wouldn’t want that either, but without some kind of reckoning, the likes of Gray and Blears will be relying on the security of their majorities (and the tribalism of voters such as Gary) to protect them at the next election – just as Blair did in 2005.

Its not about rules yet, that will come later – after the next election.

Right now its about exposing all we can about the political classes. From lobbying networks, think tanks to expenses and everything inbetween.

Discussing and trying to define new rules, at this stage, for the MPs is to play their game. Let them stew. Only when they understand common morality will they be ready for rules. It seems they are already working on stitching up the public – by privatising the fees office so that freedom of information need not apply.

As for Hazel Blears I propose we give her the maximum media space possible to explain herself. Again and again and again.

“So, let’s take a Labour MP. Assuming a Labour MP is a socialist or social democrat – even a very moderate social democrat – there is one claim about human behaviour that, as a metter of consistency with their political outlook, they have to reject. This is the claim, put forward by some on the right, that we are all essentially selfish individualists who are driven by a concern to line our own pockets, and will therefore never pass up an opportunity to do so. Unless you think that it is both possible and desirable for people to transcend that kind of motivation, then there’s no way one can be a social democrat – social democracy then looks too much at war with basic ‘human nature’.”

Not sure that follows. You could also be a social democrat because you believed we are in the main essentially selfish individuals driven by a concern to line our own pockets, and that creates human misery which needs to be mitigated by putting a system in place which limits the ability of selfish individuals to line their own pockets at the expense of others.

I remember once listening to a conservative councillor who resigned over the granting of plannng permission which he said had not appear proper and above board. There was no allegation aginst him but he resigned because he refused to be associated with people who lacked sufficient moral rectitude, his words to me were ” I did not fight the war for this “. A pilot from 1939 he ended up in the hands of SS/Gestapo.

Basically, too many MPS lack a sense of decency and moral rectitude.

But this is a “europhile” site so don’t mention it again please…

Thanks.

That is the point.

99% of us do think politicians are at it. The danger here is that it does allows fascist idiots to try to fill the vacuum.

Which is why, rather than apologising for each other, our political classes ought to be cleaning out the stables. Which they are not doing.