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We all like a clearly defined villain, someone we can all hate without fear of contradiction that we as individuals have made a mistake. There have been two stories in the past year running in the UK that have both these elements: MP’s Expenses and Banker’s Bonuses.

In both cases I believe that the “Perceived Wisdom”is totally wrong, worse a “cover up” and President Obama’s threats to limit American Banks in both size and scope, probably foolish and his message is more ‘politically populist’ than the sound of common sense. The reality behind both of these stories is something called complacency…

Overseeing Any System

There is a saying: If it is too good to be true, chances are it isn’t true. Some years ago when living in New Cross in SE London, I had my Mountain Bike stolen which was pretty good, I had actually had that bike for 4 years. I can remember talking to a Policeman who gave me a Crime Report number so that I could make a claim on my insurance. “How much was it worth” he asked, “£300”, I replied. “That is just a quick £50 to the thief” was his comment.

To be honest and as a keen photographer, if someone offered me a £2,000 camera body for £500 or less, I would know that it was stolen. The question would then be to do with my own morality and beliefs in concepts such as property rights and the rule of law.

However obscurely, the point that I’m trying to make is that whatever the situation, it is up to us as individuals to decide what is right and wrong, such matters should not be delegated to others which is what tends to happen in the kind of democracies that the Anglo-sphere shares: Elect them, if they turn out useless, throw them out at the next election, we still need to apply common sense.

I ended my front piece with the word complacency and now I want to take both ‘stories’ MP’s Expenses and Bankers Bonuses and put them into my perspective of just that but starting with the very British MP’s Expenses farrago.

The Expenses Scandal

As I’ve written before, no Prime Minister of any Party was prepared to publicly pay MPs a proper salary so a series of “subterfuges” were entered into over “expenses” such as Parliament employing secretarial help directly and also paying for local constituency “offices”. In the end, it was the “switching” of main residences or, the claims for maintenance on second homes that “did for all”.

To me, it was a wonderful laugh, how “Very British”, Moat cleaning and Duck Islands all of themselves a kind of “proof” of little real corruption. However, at some moment in time, some snot gob “just had to leak the evidence” and the Daily Telegraph, desperate for just about “anything” to support it commercially then went into “slow acid” pouring over everything.

This would have shocked existing MPs and most likely because they they ‘knew’ that they were underpaid but felt that they were being ‘compensated’ and were encouraged to milk the “system” with bizarre expenses and were therefore highly complacent and ill prepared for the following ‘out-pouring of righteous indignation’.

The reality was and still remains the case that they should have their total package restructured and paid to them gross so that they are “Policed” on deductible expenses the same as everyone else by the Inland Revenue.

The Real Question

Lies in whether the public were ill served by MPs because of the Byzantine Expenses System that grew up or, because the Labour Government and their back bench drones totally ignored the wishes of the people, the classic case being not allowing a Referendum over the Lisbon Treaty.

The subsequent and continuing furore over this will have only one consequence: Future MPs will have to be personally independently wealthy or be “sponsored” by Trade Unions or Commercial Enterprises such as Banks. I would suggest that would be even worse for democracy than paying them a proper gross salary in the first place I would go further and give truly non-party Independent MPs much bigger tax breaks than Party MPs.

The Banks

Whilst in principle, creating smaller “Retail Banks” has to be a reasonable idea, one would have to accept that along with that, we as consumers need to accept the end to free banking, we would need to pay annual and monthly fees for our accounts plus owning credit and debit cards.

Whilst the sheer lunacy as illustrated by RBS and the idiots who ran it (into the ground), in trying to become “Mega Bank Inc” is most certainly to be discouraged and many of the “Mergers and Acquisitions Deals” are totally questionable in terms of delivering any benefits to anybody except through the commissions earned for brokering them. Was it these things that caused the Banking Crisis to happen in the first place or are they just symptoms of the real disease ?

It is a bit rich for politicians like Gordon Brown who was so short sighted and lacking in any grasp of the job of Chancellor to now blame the Banks and their Bonus systems. The reality was that in a period of major growth in International Trade, there was a flood of cheap money looking for a home because the owners of those funds couldn’t find projects to spend them on. The assumption of people like Brown with his boast of having banished “Boom & Bust in the UK Economy” was this Alice in Wonderland period would continue forever when clearly it couldn’t.

The Blame Game

People want “Hate Figures” just like they want cardboard cut-out villains in a Patnto but that is a childish game because clearly over both MPs and Banks, the lessons just aren’t being learned and therefore the proposed “remedies” will have only one outcome, another future disaster. The trouble is that all people are inherently stupid and totally averse to accepting their share of the blame and a classic case of a major problem about to happen in the future is the Kraft takeover of Cadburys, clearly a decision only a half wit could make.

If Kraft felt that their market penetration and therefore future growth were stagnant, instead of growing bigger by acquisition, they would have done better to break their existing brands into independent divisions and encourage some “Intrepreneurship” by releasing the talents of their Middle Managers to develop their own markets and opportunities.

The simple truth is that nothing has been learned, Royal Bank of Scotland and AMRO, Kraft Foods and Cadbury, the end result will be the same.