Stuff

[tanngrisnir]

One of the annoying things about not being properly online most of the time is not being able to properly follow the news when it's interesting - as it has been recently. At the Iain M. Banks/Ken MacLeod event in Balloch* last Friday, they were wondering whether or not there might be a revolution of sorts in progress. Maybe... At least PR is now

Comments

[psychochicken]

Jesus would vote BNP? Is that them finally admitting that their attitudes are about 2000 years out of date?

[tanngrisnir]

Or: You can be dead 2000 years and we'll still blacken your name?

(I wonder if they realise Jesus was Jewish...)

[tanngrisnir]

The paper is certainly trying to sell papers. On the other hand, that doesn't meant that its reporting is untrue, and it seems clear that a lot of the most outrageous stuff is true (most MPs have been saying some variant of, I was within the rules, not, this is completely untrue. The paper also seems not to be displaying a lot of political bias in the revelations: the Tories have been hit with some very sticky mud as well as Labour.

Regarding the accountants' fees - it is fair enough for an MP, perhaps, to use an accountant. Not so sure it is fair enough for the accountants' fees to be paid out of the public purse. In any other business or job, if you get an accountant to do your expenses for you, you pay it, I don't see why MPs should be different for it

[pogodragon]

I commented on the expenses stuff elsewhere a while ago, and my thoughts are still the same. The system of expenses almost certainly needs looking at and updating, but the MPs that are claiming what they are allowed to claim *within the rules as they are written* I don't have an issue with.

Some have clearly been cheating, but others, even if the stuff they're claiming for seems ... inappropriate, if it's within the rules then I don't have a problem with it.

Problems with the rules, most certainly, problem with people making the most of them, not at all.

[tanngrisnir]

Except that the rules are made, ultimately, by the people who were abusing the system. I don't have a problem with expenses for reasonable stuff for setting up a second home (provided it is either in London or in the constituency - I don't see any reason why an MP should get any help with a home hundreds of miles from either), but that's quite different from using the system to make a profit on house sales or to effectively get two free houses.

Incidentally, there was some bod on TV last week commenting that being within the rules wouldn't protect some MPs from possibly being prosecuted for fraud.

[pogodragon]

Yes, the rules need changing/making by people who aren't using them - and the stuff like the irrelevant housing needs sorting out. I totally agree there, but if people are following the rules as they stand then I still can't get exercised about that.

If the system is broken it needs fixing, but I can't imagine there are really many people who wouldn't make the most of such brokenness.

[tanngrisnir]

Well, some people weren't. The name that comes most easily to mind is Vince Cable.

I suppose a comment byt Iain M. Banks t'other night sums up why I think it matters. It used to be that public service was a worthwhile end in itself, but since the late 70s that has disappeared and people treat politics as a career like any other. And it really shouldn't be. The sort of people who go into parliament and then seek to milk the system to the last penny without a clear determination to work for the greater good - not the sort of people I really want to see in parliament. There will always be some, but the system has got to the state where it preferentially seems to select for them.

[weofodthignen]

I don't really like discussing politics. But take the US system as a warning. Prestige is measured in money in the US - and the UK is increasingly moving in that direction. There's a stark choice between paying rather too much to ambitious people who would otherwise expect to earn far more than they need to live, and who increasingly are affronted if not paid far more than they need to live, because that's how they keep score of their self-importance, and paying less than that - a reasonable amount for the job and not some amount that keeps up with the Joneses (and notice how high the differential is in US corporations between the people who actually do the work and the executive elite, and how the UK has been trundling after that bad example) - and getting only those who are already wealthy. That's what Jefferson wanted because he thought of Gentleman Farmers as good guys who were wealthy because they had good heads on their shoulders and who would have the good of the country in mind, but we don't even have many of those in

[weofodthignen]

PS: I'm not sure where you're coming from in being suspicious of vocations. Maybe thinking of those who take holy orders because they can't face making adult decisions and just want to live in a monastery/nunnery and be looked after? If so, I think some of those people get a rude shock when they see what RC and CofE religious are expected to do these days - as they did in the past when they saw the sleep/prayer/farming schedule under the Benedictine Rule - and there is a vow of poverty involved. I don't think it's cushy any longer, though it certainly is largely free of angst.

But in the modern world a large number of people are in their careers as a calling. Most teachers and almost all university faculty, for one thing - pay may be adequate in some of these jobs (it never was in mine), but it's far lower than schoolfriends are getting for significantly less work. I don't admire social workers, but the same goes for them vs. private practice. And many public service jobs do require a lot of unpaid work; especially in local

[tanngrisnir]

My suspicion is largely over the failure to adequately examine the supposed vocation in certain cases. For example, should a bright kid suggest that they want to be a doctor, this tends to be accepted without challenged even where it should be obvious to anyone who knows the individual that they really are not suited to such a career. This is particularly a risk where one or both parents is a doctor. Similarly, in a religious context it can be the case that a temporary set of life circumstances is mistaken for a calling, with at least stressful consequences.

Yes, vocation is a real thing, and not a bad thing; although, even where there is real vocation it has a downside, which you highlight well: where there is a sense of vocation, it is very easy for employers to put employees in a position where remuneration for the work done is inadequate, sometimes grossly inadequate.

[tanngrisnir]

I think that the recoiling from the idea of having an accountant per se is an odd thing, probably not widespread beyond fairly unintelligent people; but having that paid for by the taxpayer is another matter (small business have to use accountants, and they don't have someone else paying the accountant for them).

Paying MPs a reasonable salary is a sensible thing; the problem is Thatcher's government bottled it and wouldn't ensure that MPs were paid a reasonable amount for their job, so expenses were used to top up the salary rather than as actual recompense for legitimate expenditure on the job.

The US system is one that makes me shudder...