Apols for not blogging regularly in recent times.
One could argue that if one cannot blog now, when can one?
But to be honest, given that I've been oscillating between anger and despair in the revelations over expenses and the 101 other problems that damage our democracy, I've been waiting for an opportunity to post when all the dirty laundry has been aired, so to speak, and try and come to some present some sort of original perspective on these matters.
Suffice is to say, I'm not sure that this has happened, even at this stage. The redacted expense forms hide as much as they show, so it is unclear how deep the troughery goes.
However, one things is very plain - when our supposed political servants are billing us for duck islands or moat cleaning or annexes for their babysitters, they have truly lost all conception of the financial reality faced by most of us today.
Our political 'representatives' are (with few exceptions) as divorced from the majority of us in terms of their moral, ethical and financial standards as are lords from their serfs.
But who is to blame, really?
Should we actually blame the careerist parliamentarians we have in the HoC at present, whose lack of anything approaching principles is seemingly a job requirement, as is toadying to and being in the thrall of business and the attendant sense of privilege?
Or should we blame the inactive populace of the UK, who allow these cretins to ride roughshod over them. As
Madeleine Bunting argues in the
Grauniad, where is the action alongside the anger? Where is the working for meaningful change from the grassroots in all this indignation?
The answer, at this moment in time, is nowhere. Undoubtedly, people will be saving themselves to belch their ire at the polls at the next election. That is simply not enough. All that will do is allow the politicians to stage manage 'change' while actually preserving many of the perks they have been abusing thus far.
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