MPs don’t get it

Jun 28 2009 by Colin Patterson, Sunday Sun

HAVE our MPs “got it” yet? I ask, because at every stage of this slow slide into total public contempt, politicians pop up on programmes like Question Time, and waffle on.

They come out with the latest spin doctor-recommended drivel like “reconnecting with the public”, “hardworking families”, “rewarding people who play by the rules”, and then promptly go back to whatever they were doing.

Judging by the documents released to the Daily Telegraph, that’s buying every possible thing they can think of, courtesy of their constituents. Everything. Literally.

From Chocolate bars to mortgage payments for homes they’ve already paid off. From donations for Battle of Britain War Veterans to houses on lakes for ducks, which it turns out the ducks were too ashamed to actually use.

We thought they might have “got it” when the much-trumpeted official release of these claims was issued, but they hadn’t. Shares in companies manufacturing black ink must have soared as every possible detail that could be deleted, or blacked out, was.

We’ve seen the results. Because so few of us could be bothered to vote in the Euro elections, some thoroughly dodgy types got sent to represent us in Brussels, or Strasbourg or wherever the gravy train meets these days.

If the mainstream parties really connected with people, this would never have happened.

One person does seem to have “got it”. It is early days, but the new Speaker of the House of Commons is from a much younger generation than previously, and turned up for work on his first day in a smart suit, rather than the ornate drag that makes the whole shambles look so outdated.

So good luck John Bercow. You’ll need it. Maybe you’ll become as popular as Betty Boothroyd, the ex-Tiller Girl who was the last speaker but one. That’s “ex-Tiller”, not “hand in the till”.