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Bill Carmichael: Hypocrite MPs' moral vacuum
YOU know satire has finally died when members of our sleaze-ridden House of Commons can keep a straight face while lambasting failed bankers for their greed and lack of probity.
Hello Mr Pot, have you met Mr Kettle?
Perhaps we could take the self-righteous posturing of the honourable members a little more seriously if they were not – to a man and woman – snout deep in the trough of parliamentary expenses.
Whatever moral authority our MPs once possessed has been long since sold for the price of a new kitchen and a wide-screen television from John Lewis.
Even the Prime Minister is reduced to pleading with bankers not to take the bonuses to which they are legally entitled.
"Show some restraint," he demands.
Is this the same Gordon Brown who claims the cost of his Sky subscription and even his light bulbs from the taxpayer? Why I believe it is!
No wonder the bankers are telling him to get knotted.
Brown is not alone – members of his Cabinet have claimed more than 2m over the past six years under the notorious additional costs allowance.
They include Home Secretary Jacqui Smith who has trousered 116,000 by claiming her main residence is not her family home in Redditch but the spare bedroom of her sister's house in south London.
Then there is Labour's golden couple of Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper who, in a piece of double counting of which the Treasury would be proud, claim expenses for the same property.
"But we've done nothing wrong", they wail, which is true – but only because the rules, drawn up by MPs themselves, are so lax.
Behaviour that would have you dragged off to jail for theft in the real world is perfectly acceptable within the Palace of Westminster.
No wonder MPs are fighting tooth and nail to keep the details of their expenses secret from their constituents.
Incidentally, this isn't a party political matter – they are all at it, and this helps explain why the criticism within Parliament has been so muted.
Who could forget, for example, Conservative MP Derek Conway who used taxpayer-funded expenses to employ his two sons?
This is corrosive of our democracy. When important issues arise, such as bailed-out banks paying millions in bonuses with our money, the public looks to politicians to provide moral leadership.
Sadly, because of avarice and stupidity, our MPs are no longer capable of providing it.
Shell shocker
Ah bliss! This morning I was able to tuck into my breakfast eggs without some joyless prodnose jabbing me in the ribs and warning that I'll die of a heart attack.
The ridiculous idea that eggs are bad for you – shamefully supported by some people in the medical community – has been Britain's most pernicious and persistent urban myth.
Until 2005 the British Heart Foundation warned that eating more than three eggs a week led to high cholesterol levels and increased the chance of heart attack.
The Foundation dropped its guidance four years ago, when it was discovered that little of the cholesterol in eggs makes its way to the blood, but many people still stuck to the three-a-week limit.
As a result we now eat fewer than half the number of eggs we did in the 1960s.
Now new research by the British Nutrition Foundation has found there is absolutely no evidence linking egg consumption and heart disease.
In fact, eggs are inexpensive, nutritious and versatile and we should eat more of them. And the lesson of this story is to ignore the food scares and eat anything you fancy in moderation and as part of a balanced diet.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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