Sunday morning, the day after the wedding and the night before, Tany and I are sat on a plane to Spain with the Sunday Times open across our laps and my first thought is… ‘why did I leave my laptop at home?’ Finally something to blog about and I’m stuck 30,000ft up and I’m flying further away from my computer.

As it turned out, a few days away from electronic communication (mobile phones only got turned on once-a-day) was a brilliant way to relax and unwind… but now I’m back I have some comment to catch up on.

The British aren’t very good at uprising. OK, we’ve had the odd civil war and skirmishes here and there, but the attitude of the common man rising up and overthrowing the government of the day seems to have diminished, we would have to stop watching telly and cancel all sport for the weekend to organise anything worthwhile. That’s until this furore over MPs expenses. If you’ve been out of the country or buried in a hole and missed it, well, it’s your loss.

Better than any television soap opera, the daily war of words that has been fought out in the media has been sublime. Once slick government ministers have appeared further and further out of touch with the ‘mood of the country’ as they try to avoid saying sorry for stealing our tax money. Instead they go in front of the television cameras to try to appear surprised and bemused that they may actually have done something wrong. This time it’s not the ‘mood of the country’ that’s got MPs in trouble, it’s one more moat cleaning, house buying, tax evading fraud too many; and finally freedom of speech and the press have done their job of following up on the follies of government. This last weekend the Sunday Times did a great job of putting it into words.

The public will not forgive or forget

This is a moment of huge significance for British politics. The disclosures over MPs’ gexpenses have turned a general lack of respect for politicians, which some put down to the decline of deference, into open contempt. We may have thought MPs were merely incompetent; now we know many are no better than fraudsers, thieves and benefit cheats.

Comment, The Sunday Times, 17.05.09, p.20

One interesting comment was in another article on the same page,

The eight weasel ways MPs avoid saying sorry

He [Sir Menzies Campbell (once leader of the Liberal Party)] told the studio audience he had now decided that it was wrong to have done this (he had claimed money to have the interior of his house decorated) and he would repay the money; but when Dimbleby asked the former leader of the Liberal Democrats why this thought had not occurred to him when he made the claim, Campbell blurted: “The public perceptions at the time were quite different.”

Dominic Lawson, The Sunday Times, 17.05.09, page 20

So it now turns out that our MPs are so influenced by popularity contests that they judge what is right and wrong, not by their own morals and beliefs, but by what public opinion dictates. Somehow I think that if the nation had realised a year ago the level 0f fraud that has been perpetrated by our elected officials we would have been been as annoyed back then as we are today. It’s just now it’s a very pubic affair that has taken far too long to sort out.

If the Speaker of the House had sorted things out, as he should have done, a month ago; changed the rules, tightened up on expenses, put a procedure in place to rectify wrongs, there’s a good chance that we wouldn’t care so much now.

The sad side to this is that we (the public) now believe that all politicians are on the take, which is blatantly unfair on those good men and women who do work hard trying to improve the situation of this country. I’m really sorry that they have come into question because of this. We should judge people on individual merit, not on the collective destruction wrought by their colleagues.

Then there’s freedom of speech. Possibly the real winner here. Our government can be questioned. We can ask where all our tax money is going and it is reasonable to expect open and honest answers. This month the press, including bloggers and journalists, have been brilliant. Not taking the stock answers but continuing to question and challenge our government.

We don’t need a right to bear arms, we don’t require a republic and fixed elections (although, I could be persuaded) we don’t even need more laws to rule on what we can and can’t say. However, just as much as the air that we breathe, we should hold to the right to think freely, discuss openly and challenge publicly all the rules and ideologies that make up this nation. We should be allowed to voice our disquiet at the attitudes of our elected officials just as much as disagree with the result of this seasons X-Factor.

Only when all things can be held up to the light and tested publicly can what is right and just be seen.