All We Ask is the Chance to Serve

Just in case you had any doubts about who is meant to be serving whom in this mother of all democracies, the Government has balanced the announcement of the Crowning Injustice Bill with the announcement that MPs' expenses are to be exempted from the Freedom of Information Act. The Crowning Injustice Bill is a legislative free-for-all which changes the law on murder, fiddles with the coroner system, protects the privacy of witnesses in gang-related cases and denies it to everybody else on the grounds that, after eleven years of joined-up government, "departments have to put through primary legislation simply to allow winter fuel payments to be made to needy pensioners because it involves two departments". The Minister for Increased Incarceration thinks that "all members of the public are in two places on this" because the risk of personal data being given to a private company in the interests of a minister's future directorship, or simply left on a train in accordance with present practice, is a price well worth paying for not having to give the same information to several different people.

The Freedom of Information Act, on the other hand, has been circumvented via a special parliamentary order by Harriet Harman, in order to prevent taxpayers finding out how their money is being spent. "In return", as the Guardian hath it, "the government is to increase the number of published categories, such as travel and accomodation, which detail where MPs used their expenses." Apparently it's safe for us to know that an MP travelled and was accommodated, but not safe for us to know whether the said MP was on a luxury cruise with a member of the Russian mafia, or doing something corrupt and underhand instead.