by Malcolm Toogood

Created on: May 11, 2009   Last Updated: May 12, 2009

I was only Following the Rules

At the end of a devastating week of tawdry disclosures of the excesses of Members of the British Parliament at the expense of their own electorates, the most-culpable can be seen in every newspaper's column-inches, verbally rocking back-and-forth, whilst chanting the above mantra. They clearly have no conception that their attempts at convincing themselves of lack of wrong-doing sound as hollow to their paymasters as similar claims made sixty years ago, emanating from some of the accused in the courts of Nuremberg, that they had "only been following orders".

To some readers, that may sound an excessive comparison, especially those that have the current financial capability to cover their individual taxation burdens. But I doubt that it will to the voter who has recently lost his job, and as a consequence is struggling to keep a roof over his family's head, as a direct result of the lack of scrutiny of the conduct of certain bankers, exercised by government departments controlled by ministers who were apparently more focussed on how large their new flat-screen TV should be in their second home.

Neither, I doubt, will it upset pensioners, whose index-linked pension has been virtually frozen by the forced reduction in the Retail Price Index as an aid towards bailing-out said bankers, and who now find it difficult to afford basic foodstuffs, while their Member of Parliament gleefully, in addition to his annual salary of GBP65,000, takes GBP100 per week, tax-free, from the public purse for the purchase of food alone.

The lack of moral-conception exhibited by some of our elected representatives this week in May 2009, has dealt their ilk such a public-relations blow, that it will take them years, maybe even decades, to live it down. Yet they still fail to grasp the fury of an electorate, many of whom are already suffering the effects of austerity measures that may have to remain in place for years to come; a fury not only regarding the types of revelation, but also the length of time, and the depth to which, these MPs' snouts have been pushed into the House of Commons trough.

Take the statement this weekend from the Immigration Minister Phil Woolas, the same man so wonderfully and publicly ambushed earlier in the week, over a completely separate issue, by the redoubtable Joanna Lumley, who reduced him to the demeanour of a naughty schoolboy caught smoking behind the bike sheds. When later challenged on one publicised expense claim

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