Gloria del Pierro tries to find out why people hate politicians

This bit of fatuity was highlighted to me by Tim Worstall…

I can explain this #whydopeoplehateme

MP tries to find out why voters hate politicians

Because you’re ignorant fuckwits who steal all our money.

Next question?

Quite apart from anything else, you’d think that Gloria De Piero (for it is she)—being a “working class, free-school-meal girl from Bradford”—would know already why people hate politicians.

It’s because everyone assumes that they are thieves: the expenses scandal simply proved it.

It’s because everyone assumes that they are liars: MPs prove it when they open their mouths.

And it’s because they steal our hard-earned money and funnel it to people who they think will get them elected again.

De Piero has written a short report on her trip for the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, partly in the hope of encouraging a rethink about how parties reach out to find new candidates, and she is talking to two unions about how to use their vast member networks to get more regular contact with MPs – starting, again, in her own constituency, with a beer and sandwich evening.

“I meet people every week and I think ‘you’re amazing, why shouldn’t you be on the council or doing my job?’ When I see a parliament that looks like Britain – it means shop workers, it means police officers, it means GPs and small-business people too – that’s what a democracy is.”

No, no, Gloria: because, you see, when these people are in Parliament they are no longer doing useful jobs—like being shop workers, police officers*, GPs** and small-business people.

They have ceased to be productive, useful members of society and, instead, have become parasites: leaching off their former colleagues, comrades and competitors.

Each meeting started with her asking the group to list the words they associated with politician. The results were not kind: them and us, the old man, upper class, completely different, liars, selfish, self-seeking, privileged and arrogant, spiv, jargon talkers, people who did not live in the real world. When she asked whom the politicians worked for, the reply was “themselves”.

You see? The people of Britain aren’t completely stupid—they know a charlatan when they see one.

What these bastions of the great British public are not sharp enough to grasp, of course, is that everyone works for themselves—it is simply human nature.

As such, we should ensure that politicians should have as little power as possible—it will then matter far less who they actually work for.

And the shop workers, police officers*, GPs** and small-business people can get on with doing decent, productive work and keeping the fruits of that work.

* I include the police only because it is used in the article. They are as corrupt and politicised as the politicians: a decent police force, however, might actually be useful.

** GPs would be useful is they just shut up and got on with fixing people, rather than trying to tell them how they should live their lives. Which might happen if we abolished the NHS and opened GPs up to competition.