Evil smelling disgrace...first, the caveat, "there are many wholly honest Labour MPs – and quite a number of Conservatives MPs are repulsive" [and some are crooks and liars I'd add] but, writes Peter Oborne in the DT, "It’s no coincidence the MPs found guilty of fiddling are all Labour".
"There is an overwhelming likelihood that it is indeed statistically significant that only Labour MPs have been found guilty as a result of the expenses investigation. Labour members of the House of Commons need to face up to the uncomfortable truth. The outcome of the Telegraph investigation strongly suggests they are much more likely to lie, cheat and steal than members of other parties. Now that the expenses scandal has drawn to a close, they urgently need to ask themselves why that should be."Go on, read that again but you didn't misread it. It is perhaps the new sense of entitlement (perhaps the same one that infests the BBC, as Martin Bell said earlier this month "...no more scandals please. No more palaces. No more crazy payouts"), the new position of power and sudden access to the sweet-shop with a pocket full of change; we know power corrupts but so does wealth. The Raw Story has part of the answer, quoting Paul K. Piff's (Department of Psychology at the University of California) new study (confirming what we know) that wealth [and power and privilege, I'd add] tends to increase a person's sense of entitlement, which in turn can lead to narcissistic behaviors:
"Narcissism is a multi-faceted and complex construct, but that wealth is specifically associated with it suggests that as a person’s level of privilege rises, that person becomes increasingly self-focused – in a sense, becoming the center of their own world and worldview..."Looking at Piff's previous work (Upper class more likely to...) we see he clearly thinks it's a class/wealth issue but I don't think it's that (dare I say that I think that's piffle?) and certainly not in Labour's case: we have a Parliament full of lying, cheating, stealing fuck-wits, the fact that statistically more of them are Labour seems logical to me, it's just the way they are. :-)
2 comments:
I read this when you posted it but work has been really intense for the last week - hence my lack of activity and playing catch up.
Wanted to say this was one of the best posts (with the links) I have read for a long time. It stuck in my head for a couple of days, mainly because of Piff's work which I found fascinating.
Thanks for putting this together, great stuff.
Thanks! I enjoyed writing it, almost as much as the US Black violence post a month or so back (which I also enjoyed writing) which has had the most hits ever for an Owsblog post, beating the previous record of 1000+ by several hundred; the previous was one of those posts about Paul (haha) the Octopus World Cup ones.
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