MPs Expenses affair - deep skullduggery afoot

[Jan Klimkowski]

David - fascinating.

As Jonathan Aitken demonstrated with his (giggle) "simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play", the British right is entirely without integrity or higher moral purpose in these matters.

So, who is running these Thatcher-connected security folk?

Cui bono - in the broad, geopolitical, sense - from these revelations?

As Naomi Klein says in the radio interview thread:

NAOMI KLEIN: I mean, I wish things had gotten better since we last spoke. And I think I called the bank bailout the biggest heist in monetary history back then, and it’s just gotten bigger. We’ve seen just an absolutely unprecedented transfer of public wealth into private hands. And, you know, what I’ve been saying from the beginning, I think it’s becoming even clearer now, which is that the crisis in the financial sector is not being solved, it’s being moved. A private-sector crisis is being transformed into a public-sector crisis, in the sense of the huge deficit that’s being left behind because of this bailout, which isn’t even doing what it’s supposed to be doing in terms of restoring credit and fixing the real economy.

So the price of this is—if it isn’t fixed, is going to be paid in cutbacks to healthcare, to Social Security. We aren’t even—we haven’t felt the full shock yet. And that’s my concern. Yes, I’m concerned about what’s going on now, but I’m concerned about how this transfer of wealth is going to be paid for down the road in terms of the meager social services that Americans get in exchange for their tax dollars.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, and yet, you’re seeing now, at least in the stock market, the bank stocks, as well as some of the others, at least leveling off or beginning to rise again, even as unemployment continues at record levels, new people that are thrown out into the street every month.

NAOMI KLEIN: You know, and during the election campaign, you know, I think what Obama articulated so well is the fact that people realize that what’s good for Wall Street isn’t necessarily good for Main Street. And he said, you know, we’ve had this top-down approach, giving more and more to people at the top, waiting for it to trickle down, and he promised that that would change.

Quite the contrary. What’s actually happened is that homes, jobs have been sacrificed in order to stabilize the financial sector.

The MPs have had their snouts in the trough, and deserve all the vilification they're getting. But the amount they've swindled amounts to a little pig gruel compared to the hundreds of billions of pounds the global financial system has stolen from ordinary working people and taxpayers.

Clearly the MPs' expenses claims are a diversion from the important looting of the taxpayer money that's going on.

But it's also bigger than that: British MSM's constant refrain is that "Parliament is in complete disrepute". Parliament itself is becoming destabilized.

Looks like an, um, Stategy of Tension to me.... :vroam: