Politicians from all sides are frustrated that regular politics has effectively been put on hold while certain MPs are forced to justify the fact they used public money to install mock Tudor beams or to remove moles from their land.
And "regular politics" being on hold is a bad thing? I think that it's rather good that the members of the exclusive Westminster Village echo chamber are discovering that they have to pay attention to the people who pay for them, and not "do as I say, not as I do". (For example, special casing ContactPoint to exclude their own children.) Maybe the agenda should include what the public wants, not just what Westminster, Whitehall and the orbiting media thinks it should be. "Regular politics" has been turning people off for years.
Re:I hate the electorate
ajt on 2009-05-11T21:31:22
Most people just don't care as long as there is cheap food, beer and footy on TV... It is a disgrace what MPs have got up to with our money, however I totally agree that it's shocking their utter lack of backbone they have when it comes to doing the right thing on just about every other issue possible.
Re:I hate the electorate
nicholas on 2009-05-12T09:28:40
I think it has a lot to do with ease of comprehension of the problem, and relevance to day-to-day issues. For example, in the US, in 2004, 19 percent of voters described terrorism as their most important issue
... only 9 percent of voters described terrorism as the most important issue in 2008, and opinions on global warming vary as a function of personal relevance. Waging of aggressive war, deliberate attacks on civilians, support for brutally murderous regimes, and torture are things that happen far away, or at least out of sight (I don't think that the CIA did waterboarding in public), whereas homes are things that all of the electorate have, and hence how to finance them via jobs, benefits, or externalising the problem. The specific ire is that "honourable" members have been (understandably) spouting off about benefits cheats, profligately greedy bankers, and trying to sell the idea of having to become more frugal (because there is no more borrow-your-way-out-of-trouble left), and then it becomes revealed that there is a massive amount of "do as I say, not as I do". One rule for them, one rule for us. I suspect also that a lot of the electorate don't want to care about any part of politics because they're so switched off by the whole charade, and have been for years. My father commented that when Peter Mandleson un-resigned for the umpteenth time, the World at One (no link, because the new webshite is site) was extended from 30 to 60 minutes, and was exclusively about him. Why? What relevance does it have to the 99.9something% of the country who aren't within the blast radius of Parliament Square? The electorate might stand more of a chance of actually caring about politics, policy, and governance if the circle jerk of politicians, spin doctors and attendant media stopped talking only to themselves.
