Over the weekend I’ve been troubled by a philosophical question – is it preferable for our politicians to be dishonest or incompetent? In an ideal world it would be better for them to be neither, but sadly those are not the days we are living in.
There has always been a suspicion that too many of our elected representatives weren’t to be trusted, but more from experience of broken promises than allegations that they’ve been pilfering our hard earned cash.
Rik Mayall’s brilliant creation Alan B’stard has begun to look worryingly believable over the past week. But in a departure from B’stard’s clinical destruction of his accusers, the fashionable defence these days seems to be that MPs have got their personal finances in a pickle because they are impressively stupid.
For an MP to claim £16,000 to cover mortgage interest on a loan that has been repaid is an oversight on a gargantuan scale. But accounts do get muddled when you’re busy – and, hey, it’ll never happen again. Until the day after. And amazingly the next overworked bleeding heart who had claimed for interest on a repaid mortgage did so by mistake as well!
Now I don’t class myself as a gullible idiot, but I have for many years broadly believed what politicians told me, particularly on legal matters. A few years ago I was convinced that the homicidal Iraqis could deploy a missile within 45 minutes that would hone in on my garden and wipe out my begonias. So much so that I covered my garden shed with silver foil and filled it with cans of baked beans and corned beef. Boy, did I feel silly?
But let’s just assume for a moment that these oversights were actually innocent errors. I must say, in that case, I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea that our elected representatives are so stinking rich that they wouldn’t query an erroneous five figure sum dripping into their bank account, or forget that they’d repaid the relevant loan, until the Daily Telegraph ran a story on it. Obscene wealth combined with financial ignorance isn’t an attractive proposition for the electorate.
And you’d think that claiming £800 a month for food would not only raise eyebrows in the fees office - but more menacingly would prompt a knock on the door from the Department of Health’s obesity police.
The highlight of the week for me was Margaret Beckett, in a hilariously stupefying onslaught on Question Time, accusing the Telegraph of scattering the personal data (including bank details) of MPs, and more importantly their unsung band of support workers, into the public domain. I wouldn’t worry about it too much Mrs B. The DVLA and HMRC did exactly that to twenty five million of us two years ago – but it was a mistake.
So back to my original dilemma. We certainly don’t want heads of state that are both dishonest and incompetent. It might be fun but we can’t seriously entertain the thought of housing Dick Dastardly and Muttley at numbers 10 and 11. Having said that - at least they’d have an enthusiastic stab at clearing some of the pigeons from Trafalgar Square.
So no, we don’t want incompetence or dishonesty. And thank goodness we can believe that we have hundreds of MPs who are neither. So I suppose in the end I’ve come to the conclusion that there are just too many of them.
Stuart Wilkin writes for Insider
www.insidermedia.com
Spare a thought for your poor old bank manager, and try to think of something nice that you can do for him - because let's face it, he's probably been a bit down in the dumps lately. What was once a job for life occupied by a respected community pillar, is now treated with the same disdain as the poo on your shoe. The bank director now has the status of an estate agent; Captain Mainwaring has become Rigsby, and it's not altogether fair.
But if you'd rather cuddle a skunk and you think I've lost my grip on reality ask yourself this: Who was it that developed the global strategies to sell inappropriate mortgages to customers who couldn't afford to repay them? Who bundled the high risk debts to sell them on? Who brokered the deal for one bank to take over another bank without completing fully adequate due diligence? Well it wasn't Captain Mainwaring that's for sure. But now it's down to businesses and bank managers to sort the whole mess out.
When a furious Gordon Brown, with the dark countenance of a Presbyterian schoolmaster, shouted at the banks, insisting that they lend us our money back, they still had their fingers crossed behind their backs - even those that were being nationalised. But the business banking managers on the front line, the good ones, were just as angry as us. And now, I hear, there are signs that the money is starting to trickle through. The Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform has announced that so far over 2,000 Enterprise Finance Guarantee loans have been granted to small businesses.
The scheme, whereby 75 per cent of the debt is guaranteed by the government, was designed to help businesses who had a good business plan but inadequate security, to raise finance. Initially the banks were reluctant to participate, but that might be changing.
And the business community can help by making the bank manager's job easier. Gone are the days where a plan on the back of a fag packet and a bottle of whisky for the manager were enough. You need to help the bank manager to appease his credit committee. Understand your business; know the detail; research your market, know your competitors, use the financial ratios that can help you to improve your profits. And, for a while anyway, become obsessive about credit control. A well thought out and well presented business plan will help you as well as the bank.
And the poor blighters need a lift. They've even stopped spending the fees we cheerfully pay to them on ski trips and champagne fests, or so it seems. Which predictably brings me on to the other section of society that have become celebrated for their enthusiasm in spending our money on themselves. I do wish all this fuss about the MPs expenses would die down.
For goodness sake, how can we expect our elected representatives to function properly without two roofs over their heads, an executive cleaner, manure, women's' clothes and a plentiful supply of kitkats? I was going to ask the tax specialist at Axis if I could put the receipt for the two Swedish documentary DVD's my 'friend' rented through my business, but I thought better of it.
We must remember that it's very easy to mock politicians when they're trying so hard to run the country and tell us how we can live better, only to find that they've been found out. And it can be a lot of fun too.
But they're not going to lend us the money to support our business. So let's ignore them for the moment and rebuild our relationships with the chaps who can. Smile at a banker today, and if he starts crying just run away!