WE MAY be angry at MPs for, morally at least, misappropriating taxpayers' money for their own, personal gain. But we are enraged and incredulous that the majority of Westminster politicians still don't believe they have done anything terrible, or even wrong.
Their response to the scandal began with a defiant "We claimed within the rules". It moved on to "We need to change the system". And then to "We'll pay part of it back".
David Cameron may be inching them towards remorse but really, what we are al
l waiting for is something along the lines of "I admit I'm a grasping, greedy, immoral excuse for a public servant, determined to squeeze every penny I can out of the public regardless of the recession and how many of my constituents are losing their jobs and homes. It may go no way to making amends but I apologise for my shameful corruption and I resign". As if . . .
They don't really get it and never will. To them £60,000 is peanuts and anything they can screw on expenses is fair game. Or, as Speaker Michael Martin allegedly put it to one senior MP: "I didn't come into politics not to take what's owed to me."
What has become abundantly clear is that MPs, often grown hot-house style with political degrees followed by political research jobs, election to a council and thence to parliament, are totally out of touch with real people and immersed in the career world of party politics. Many remain baffled by the public outcry.
It would be small comfort to think this condition of denial only affects MPs. Alas, it spreads wider than that.
Teachers are also blinkered and deluded. Through their three Scottish unions they are demanding the same tax benefits that would be enjoyed by a precariously self-employed person working from home. That's on top of a salary up to £40,000 for a classroom teacher, a guaranteed 35-hour week, 12 weeks' holiday, sick pay and a gold-plated public sector pension scheme.
Why? Because they sometimes do marking and lesson prep at home. They don't even want to have to claim for it. Instead they want it to be automatically built into their salary payments. Bear in mind this may not even be extra work because their conditions already allow them to leave school and mark or prepare at home.
Here again we have a bunch of people who went to school, on to teacher training college, then back to school. They appear blissfully unaware that most people in the real world take work home. Dustmen and lion tamers aside, office workers, journalists, shop managers et al frequently work on their own PCs, compiling reports, making business phone calls, drawing up spreadsheets, budgets and plans at home, at no extra cost to their employer.
And, as always it seems, we have the banks. RBS staff had the Ailsa course at Turnberry opened exclusively for them and a bunch of clients last week. They enjoyed a master class from Jack Nicklaus, a round of golf and presumably some refreshments. The bank said it didn't cost them a penny. Perhaps not directly. But it's bad PR. And, correct me if I'm wrong . . . but aren't we paying for these staff to be at work? This is not the climate for corporate entertainment on a lavish scale no matter who's paying. Some sensitivity is required.
Indeed, the whole concept of banking ever having been a private industry, spending its own money as it likes, is flawed. "Their" money is not just what they can wheedle out of rich investors. It is also the widow's savings, the old man's electricity bill fund, the labourer's wages, the young couple's house deposit. We always "owned" the banks. Yet show me a banker who feels accountable to the public. Show me the banker who doesn't believe this is just a blip and things will go back to "normal" with bonuses, high salaries, another boom in investment and everything to play for.
I don't blame the individuals. The culture and methods of work imposed on them mean they can't really see a future other than a return to pre-recession ways. One thing politicians, teachers and bankers have in common is that they are all totally funded by the general public, rich and poor, yet feel no accountability and believe that in their subsidised and rarefied world, they know best. They can't be wrong. The rest of us just don't understand.
It's almost an institutionalised form of insanity or personality disorder, certainly delusional and probably narcissistic.
In Westminster at least, it's currently touching on paranoia: "I didn't do anything wrong. The world's out to get me."
We may yet emerge from this broken society and this crippling recession. We may wake up and realise a new order is needed, a better and fairer order. But if so it will be heralded not by a rise in the FTSE but in a deafening, sucking "schlooop" sound as the deluded finally get the message and pull their heads from the sand.
