Loopholes…

The general hypocrisy of the great British public never ceases to amaze me. Over the course of the past week we have had the revelations about MP’s expenses. These revelations have caused uproar, and quite rightly so. Some of the abuses of the system that MP’s had made were startling and shocking. In essence though, they had been playing the system, and had been doing so for many years. They were exploiting loopholes in the law which meant they could claim for all sorts of things for all sorts of homes. The public have reacted with fury to the way MP’s have abused a system designed, in its origin, to help the MP’s living away from home.

Which is why I’m really annoyed about this story. Here is a loophole that the landlady has jumped through to avoid the smoking ban, and increase numbers back into her pub. Having listened to the person who ‘found’ this loophole on the radio this lunchtime, I grew increasingly annoyed as he showed no awareness of the hypocrisy with which he was surrounding himself. On the one hand he showed himself to be critical of the MP’s who had been exploiting loopholes, but on the other, he was proudly boasting that he knew of at least another couple of such holes to be exploited (naturally enough, he didn’t want to reveal them). There were many smokers who rang, texted, or emailed the radio to show their support for the landlady and her cause.  Many thought that declaring a pub a “research centre” was a good idea as it allowed people to smoke inside. There was simply a complete lack of wider understanding. It is, at least according to a proportion of the public, fine for the public themselves to exploit loopholes in the law, but not for MPs. I can only repeat my opening thoughts. Hypocrites.