I'm an MP. Get me out of here!

I’ve never voted.
Throughout my adult life, only two governments have held power. I’ve had over a dozen years of Conservative rule and the same from Labour.
Neither did I trust, nor did I expect anything good to come of them.
My mother always put pen to paper, but I never bothered.
Friends asked why I don’t vote when I’m clearly a political animal.
Was I an anarchist? Didn’t I want my vote to count? Was I just sitting on the fence? Was no one good enough for me?
The answer to the first three questions would be no, but the last one is a resounding yes.
Of course none of them were good enough for me.
I see the need for schools, a national health system, local authority, the police, commerce, public transport, regeneration, art and all the other things without which we would feel as if a digit on our hands was missing.
But why do we need the government?
If people aren’t laughing at them, they’re either spitting venom at them or sat on the sofa with dropped jaw at another howler.
It wasn’t always like this, though.
Pre-70’s governments didn’t change everything for the sake of change. They could barely afford to think about change, let alone do it. It was all ‘keep calm and carry on’; not ‘keep quiet and carry through’.
The price of gas was the price of gas, not the price that speculators wanted it to be, good only for the globally rich, and therefore the government via taxes. Gas is gas. I don’t need ten suppliers.
In the past, MPs were generally quite cheap to run.
They didn’t have expenses that outstripped their wages, scandals were sporadic (not daily), and they normally held seats in the areas that they were from.
There was an economy, but it wasn’t falsified and didn’t rely primarily on their coffers being spent in order to realise targets and pay off quango shysters.
Nepotism engulfs this government, just as it will when another lot get in.
MPs are similar to big-time actors; the MP starts a company up to assist in what should be part of their job while the actor sets up a film production company and gets other people to run it. At the end of the tax year, they are paying themselves.
Just as religion is perpetual and generally governed by the way the world around us changes and where we are from, parliament is seen as a necessary part of life.
But this government thinks nothing of spending vast sums of money on a museum wing and I cringe when I think of how Britain’s poor are deprived of housing to keep house prices buoyant.
As with religion and politics, football’s premier league is much the same.
Very few are paid huge sums of money and the rest in that division are just happy to be a part of it. All the other divisions are small fry, meaningless in the grand scheme of multi-national ownership.
I’m all for multi-culturalism, but I can’t help thinking that this government has used Great Britain, and especially England, as a testing ground for multi-culturalism at its most relaxed in an attempt to be hailed as its one and only pioneer in the world.
That would be egotism at its most cruel for its citizens, the ones that bear the brunt of being marginalised.
A lot of UK nationals have lost work to a cheap immigrant labour force, and it’s the bread and butter jobs that have gone, but privately, Britain’s well-off are far from averse to employing illegal workers. Some say foreigners, illegal or not, are more trustworthy, but what does that say about Britain?
If there was no government, who would rule?
When each individual mechanism that makes the country’s clock tick is proven to work better and more harmoniously without constantly being reshaped or replaced for no good reason, who needs it?
This government has a need to change the way things work even when they work well.
Labour’s motto is; ‘Only fix it when it’s broken, and when it’s working, mess about with it and change its role. This, in turn, will accelerates a breakage, at which time we must implement drastic change.’
While ridiculous targets are blinding perfectly well-sighted workers from their jobs, line-managers become detached from workers and the cord corrupts, slowly but certainly, until it snaps, at which time the government is forced to fix it, usually by reinstating the old system that they’d started tampering with.
The worst thing about having a government these days is that it costs so much money.
If each MP earns £100,000 and creams the same again in expenses, that must add up.
In the disgraced former speaker's case, his own hideous scandal has caused him to employ an advisor at a cost of £100,000 to better his image. This, presumably, will clean his reputation as a lord!
Who does he think he’s kidding? He can’t kid a kidder but he can kid a kid, even if that kid is himself. Either way, it’s your money he’s floating about.
Then there’s the expense of an MP actually being in the Houses of Commons, drinking free alcohol, eating free food, farting and generally taking up space whilst being afforded a comfortable flat within walking distance, where he may watch his 42-inch LCD telly and fall asleep on a feathered mattress, compliments of John Lewis.
Without MPs, the beautiful Houses of Parliament could easily become the most prestigious club in the world. Maybe call it the Ministry of Sound or something catchy like that.
Football’s different to politics. It’s a sport played on a level playing field. Or is it?
With football, it’s a top-four scenario, and although the same four win the league every year, a lot of fans from all divisions absolutely love the game.
With religion, it’s again a top-four scenario (where no one really wins), but many people gain enlightenment through these and other channels.
With politics, it’s always been a top-two thing, but only politicians win.
One gains power, does well for the change but then quickly starts to lose direction, much like a lottery winner after a few years. With complacency, their aim dulls and becomes purely about remaining there. Like a proud squatter in a rundown mansion, with doors and windows bolted and boarded, the government hang on by their teeth, counting down the days to the next election while the public wait for them to leave, hoping against hope for something better.
Then the next lot get in, start stumbling about and slowly lose touch with life.
The thing that puts sport, religion and politics together is a desire shared by all to be the best.
A good government has long-term aims. Labour has seen its own hopes dissolve into the skips of their own denial, while the Tories lay in wait, wet lipped and only intent on doing what their PR guys think might wash with the public in order to live above their means for the rest of their lives.
Long and short, MPs from either side are the same in essence. One gets in and fails, then the other gets in and fails.
If they both fail in the long run, why have either? At least with football and religion, there’s a sense of hope and belonging.
A doctor doesn’t need government, nor a nurse or teacher. The unemployed certainly don’t need a government.
Nobody needs a government apart from MPs, and although it was cheering to see 121 MPs step down with the rest left off the Queen’s honours list, what more proof do we need to see them off for good?
Civil servants are needed, of course, but only to transmit and receive information with the private sector (which is all but the post office and the NHS, both of which are uncomfortably close to private ownership).
If our taxes were sorted by an American firm until a private French company took the helm, why still do we need a government? Even collecting taxes is below them.
Is it so wrong to hope that local councils can be responsible enough to be autonomous? They do all the real work anyway.
At least, then, if something goes awry, the door that you need to knock on is only a bus ride away.
I still can’t come to terms with the difference between centralisation and decentralisation; their meanings always sound the same.
An anagram of ‘Tony Blair MP’ reads ‘I’m Tory Plan B’ and I dread to think what Maggie’s might reveal (answers on a postcard, please.)
Ask yourself what good a government does for you as a member of the public and you may scratch your head for a long while.
To me, the government is a laughing stock never punished, a self-seeking pundit of little worth to anyone, least of all their own families.
What was New Labour has turned out to be more repugnant than the hardest of any right-wing reign, a rose decomposed and regenerated as a poppy.
Gordon Brown continues to see life through a Hovis advert set in Bonnie Scotland, but it just isn’t like that any more.
In fact, it never was; it was an advert from the 70’s, and perhaps that’s what’s wrong with the man; he thinks that life’s an advert from the 70’s. ‘Tell them what they want to hear and be damned if it doesn’t taste as good.’
When I think of an MP, I think ‘calamitous error of judgement’ or ‘outrageous double-standards’ or good old ‘expenses scandal’.
I don’t think ‘that’s a good idea’ or ‘thank goodness for that’.
MPs are the ultimate benefit cheat. They systematically cheat money from under the noses of the people, just so long as they’re prepared to suffer a scandal.
This next election, imagine a three-way battle at the polling stations; The Conservatives (blue), The Labour Party (red) and the No Opposition Party Elect (psychedelic shapes in black and white).
Just think… a party that renounces parliament, eliminates government and its shadow, has no leader (apart from the Queen) and offers the day-to-day running of power to each of the authorities in the country’s counties.
If NOPE got the nod and the club doesn’t get a licence, we could always turn it into a swanky hotel for ex-MPs and other holidaying world leaders.
All paid for, of course.