MPs' expenses: If only Westminster were a gentlemen's club
The House of Commons has been called "the best club in London", but only by people who aren't members of any others. For it lacks the key ingredient that makes up a really good club: the blackball. Absolutely anybody can become a Member of Parliament who has the qualifications of a thrusting temperament, opinionated nature, desire to boss us about, need to show off and, very often, a gnawing inferiority complex and mother fixation. Who would want to belong to a club full of people like that? And that was before we discovered they also had their fingers in the till.
Neither, since the abolition of the hereditary element of the House of Lords, is that as attractive a club as it once was. The long years of New Labour creating vast numbers of peers has inevitably taken its toll on the quality of the people there, and, unlike clubs, no one is forced to resign through bankruptcy or imprisonment. The recent cash-for-questions scandals have debased what was once the most noble institution in the land, after the monarchy.
Misplaced nostalgia much? This on its own is so outrageous that it's actually laughable, but it gets worse, as always, in the comments, which I was only willing to dive into in the hopes that I might read something, anything that explicitly discusses women's place in this grand model for our government:
Commenter 1: "What about any bars to membership? Women? Muslim? Black? Gay??"
Commenter 2: "I doubt very much that being black, muslim or gay would be a bar to membership of any of the clubs mentioned."
Well, that's all right then!
