....what can be bought and sold then the first thing to be bought and sold will be the legislators, as PJ O' Rourke so wisely pointed out.
We can turn this around and ask ourselves who is being bought and sold and thus who has that power to decide. Or to tone down the outrage a little, who is attempting to influence whom, whose ears are being whispered into? That will tell us something about who has the power to influence decisions.
Senior civil servants responsible for contracts worth billions of pounds accepted tickets to Wimbledon, the Chelsea Flower Show and the opera from firms carrying out government work.
Interesting, no? The late great Will Sutton was once asked why he robbed banks and he gave the immortal reply, "Because that's where the money is". A business is not going to spend money on entertaining those who will not increase its profits so we must therefore conclude that this expenditure will, in the minds of those spending it at least, lead to higher profits.
I realise that this might sound a little odd but I would much rather have the legislators being bought and sold as they made these decisions rather than the bureaucrats being so as they do so: at least we have that basic democratic opportunity of kicking the bastards out occasionally. So could we go back to a system whereby the elected politicians actually make the decisions. Please?
