Ethics or Opportunism
Jun 1st, 2009 • Posted in: Letters From ReadersA reader comments on Rushworth Kidder’s column last week, which examined the moral outrage springing from the disclosure that British politicians have been charging lavish housing expenses to the taxpayer:
The moats, trouser presses and manure — you missed the $3,000 duck house — are all great knock-about comedy, but the question is not, as you suggest, whether Parliament being distracted by these small scandals caused Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the U.K.’s credit rating. Rather it is: If MPs hadn’t been so accustomed to a completely legal — the laws being of their own making — system of expense claims and tax dodges, would they have noticed sooner that the economic boom they were busy claiming credit for was actually built on fraud and thin air? Would they have noticed and spoken out against bankers’ obscene salaries and bonuses if they hadn’t been busy organising their own, admittedly slightly smaller, ones? …For Labour MPs, elected to further the cause of the poorest people in the land, to grab public money with both hands in this way, is truly shocking. Whether it is ethics or opportunism that is shaping the — rather late — reactions of the party leaders remains to be seen.
– Judith Martin
Winchester, Hampshire, United Kingdom
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