Gear 1 : Getting it.
“Getting it “ is clearly the new word-toy of the political media classes. Politicians who have failed to respond to the recent expenses saga are describes as not getting it. Likewise journalists say of themselves that they too a while to ‘get’ the point of the scandal. They had assumed that what really mattered in an expenses scandal was, well expenses. Therefore by logic the people who ought to be in the most trouble where those who claimed the most. This meant that by right David Cameron ought to have been in trouble, e after all claimed an extraordinary amount of money (£23000) for the upkeep of a mansion, and did so in spite of being a rich man with a richer wife, who really could afford the mansions up keep, and if he could not, probably should not have one. In a sense here of course is the real scandal of the system. The taxes o f the poor and the okay off, were going to subsidise one rich man's penchant for his lovely house.
However logic ha very little to do with these affairs. What riled, was in fact something rather different. I was the fact that he expenses claim were founded upon a little piece of dishonesty. That is it was founded upon the ct that Mp felt that they could not give themselves a pay rise and so had this very generous system instead. As such those who did not or could not make a claim felt hard done by. Moreover there was a real incentive to be creative with what they claim. So that there was a real incentive to convert the claim into ‘real estate’ (so called filling) or se it for the day to day business of life. The expenses fund were then a clandestine fund for jollies and addition wealth.. But this fact the made the claims rather ‘dangerous’. it is one thing to funds man his penchant for large houses, but t is another thing of fund the day to day expenses of individuals who really ought to be paying to themselves (or increasing their own pay , and really should not use the system as an kind of investment bank. The problem being that these kind of claims make one assume that the mp’s who are making them has to spend considerable time and effort tin the making of the claim. Time and effort that they were not then spending on actually doing their job, that is running the state.
The problem therefore be said to logically come down to this: The ‘public were apparently generous with what they allowed rich buggers to claim. But their arsehole sweaked the moment the claims became creative. The moment then instead of governing the individuals involved where clearly spending time and effort in making claims. There is logic here at least.
And yet this last far it is just he one that makes then entire sue so suspect. There is a logic, when probably that is the wrong approach. This is where the phase ‘getting it, and the problems of who does and who does not Get it starts to bite. The phrase, of course implies, no demands that there is a something to get. And yet was not really how the scandals work. On the contrary the phrase ‘get it’ s merely the final fiat of a long running process, that clearly has many threads. The eventual outcome (that Blears and not Cameron goes) was not a necessary outcome was rather the effect of feelings bouncing around the body politic and demanding heads, without really worrying where those demands come form/ the scandal therefore needs to be read from many directions. But hooks up many problems and sends them sliding across one another, with the ‘get it; operating as a silent gear in the middle, whose role is to calibrate these elements.
In this piece one needs first to identify the different pieces (there are at least six of them), and secondly to see how in ‘getting it; then came to move one across the other(and grind down political lives in theprocess0.
The scandal would have never happened if the government had mad been somewhat flaccid and gloriously incompetent. It would have been a very different scandal in the early days of New labour. Blair would have announced reforms, and place the whole thing in the past. What made the scandal or rate the necessary condition for it was a government that had been in a long time and was already floundering. This government could not then claim it was somehow someone else’s' fault or could not do so easily. Nor was it strong enough to act. It could not cease events, and would rather simply have the sit and take it. What is ore of corsue this is also the government which has introduced innumerable intrusive and rather bullying measures (performance leagues, Stats examines etc) designed at making various bodies buy mainly the soft targets of education, health and local government transparent (they shied of doing tougher nuts of the media and business, the ones who need regulating…). Therefore there was a vindictive joy that in term so performance and over all underhandedness they were worse than those they endlessly hectored!
The second necessarily ingredient was a long running problem with what the freedom of information legislation was. Here was something passed in the high days of new labour. In those days a new broom was to be felt and was to sweep through Whitehall. In those ay the government, so ,on an opposition felt all government was simple, and could easily be rendered open (Jim hacker thought the same). the problem was that they discovered or came to discover that actually modern democracy was about deals, deals often made in clandestine manners and behind doors. What is more all people management involved implicit understanding and nod and winks, be that group the family, the party or the state. T makes little r no sense to then to have a freedom of information bill as such. Or rather if one does it is not exactly clear what is to be free. Something elements are ‘purely’ personal’ and yet that personal carries within power. that is as government is done by people often over lunch, then the expenses of their lunch claim matter or at leas they kind of matter, as these figures are the only witnesses of what was said at that meeting. The dishes and the expense then is all we have to indicate the hugger mugger of deals done at lunch. They matter, the demand was then that everything had to be released, as everywhere their was ‘potential’ information. This last fact then of course led to a long running fight between the political and the journalist classes over whether this everything was really necessary or not.
The everything must be released school might not have had the poor it had if it was not immediately confused with something else. For a while now the logic of 24 hour news but also 24 hour television has meant that there was a real drift towards trivial ‘human interest Big brother type stories. These ‘human interest cum prurience’ stories make the issue of what dog food an Mp in uses in itself of interest. The idea then that there a list of who has spent what and where and when, was potential gold mine. Here is news to fill news paper and TV channels and radio waves for weeks. Here was that rarest of things a story that the political classes could engage in, and so could the wider 'culture’. A story that was at once a reality TV Show and a political story!
But this desire for stories would not itself be enough. There had to be a new organization which clear saw itself as the dedicated foe f the current government The Tory graph had the been investigating the claims for a while. They had wanted the information about coffee and Mps, and dogs and everything. when they were then offered the information for sale by whatever public minded so it was, they jumped at the chance. Once they had so jumped of course then needed to make a story. That is they need the expenses not to be entirely straight forward. He David Cameron type story, rich man claims too much, was then a little to straight forward. They had spent years in this investigation They wanted (and needed) corruption. They needs a real story. They therefore went to the paper once they had bought them in the quest for a real story, and of course found it. The years of research then influenced what they run with.
Finally all these factors then fell upon the bewildered public, This was not thought any public, but one has been treated in the last year of so to a clear and aren't double standards. Industry could go by the wall, and yet bankers were saved (and allowed o help themselves sin the process), a public that has also then been launched into a vicious recession partly as a result of the machinations of the same bankers) and were facing finical hardship . They were then public looking for someone to blame. A feeing the was no doubt all the stronger as their was the problems of a delayed general election. That is by the normal course o things hey would have been able o whack the government in a general election campaign. , and deprived of this outlet, they had to find other ways to whack the governing classes.
These elements then formed the background. That is they formed that which the ear , theory, the process, of getting it, spun. This is story though that clearly took a while to really spin. That is it took awhile to really wax creative. Initially the story was a merely about dodgy claims( The telegraph lead against Gordon Brown). This story however did not really run. T=It was clear that these dodgy claims were not that dodgy. Hey might have been alright. A different strategy was then followed by a paper clean to make good into investments. It spun the story of flipping, and Mp’s using their expenses to manage property portfolios. This on the face of it is clearly wrong : or at leas it is clearly work as long the expenses were called expenses and not (as they really were) payments in kind. It was then a story that smacked too much of the bankers, an the glad handing ways of the city. It therefore smell real bad. What is more the Mp’s clearly hand very little defence. Or better the problem was there defence was actually water tight one. This kind of activity was actually what the expenses where really for however given he fact that the same mp’s had always claimed that they were doing something else, that the expenses were genuine expenses, this ‘truth’ was unsayabe. The Mp’s merely looked shifty.
I was then this shiftiness which caught the public eye. Here was politicians behaving a bankers, and behaving as crooks. Her was the politicians he public felt they had always been muttering about The politicians who feathered their own nest, the ones who were creative about it. The ones to be condemned.
It was the on this environment the second set of stories (which of course started with claims for Duck islands and moats) fell. The story shifted, from straight outrage to high humour. That suspicion that Mps were taking the piss became a real driving rage. And here one needs care. The point was the idiocy of the claims, and their humour oddly made them seem worse. The Telegraph in playing for laughs found or better channelled (almost certainly unwittingly) the anger. That suspicion that politicians were pulling the wool over the public eyes became a certainty, as they then become enraged.
The gar at the heart of this story then started to spin on it own account. The story became about the oddities and imbecilities of the claims and not merely their amount. That is anything that smacked of thigh humour of the duck island was to be condemned, so that included dog food or excessive food bills. Against these grotesque claims the mere fact that some mps did really rather well out of the system was forgotten. Or better it was not part of the spinning story. It lacked the high the high comedy. The manner in which the story ‘geared up, then created a public of outrage. Or better the public is created in bars, and pubs and constituencies was very like the outraged’ straight man’ in a comedy routine, their job was to be as angry as possibly. The more angry thy were, the worse things then seemed to be. Claims (like food) which might have a other times been allowing the nod became suddenly problematic and unacceptable, in the same way that in a comedy routine the good comedian turns common place line and normality into mass humour.
As such he entire story became one of those complex pack phenomena. As a pack we know we all condemn the expenses claims o mp’s? We know we most be against them, and that somehow or somewhere there is an audience ( of celestial mp’s) laughing at us. A fact that made the public outraged. The media then faced with this outrage has nowhere to go. They could not challenge it however unjust they might have thought it or problematic. They merely hand it allowed to it. They had to ‘get it’ .That is they has the get that the story was really this po-faced outrage at the bizarre (if not necessary expensive) claims became the story. Flipping was merely as aspect. Once it then became the story the public became certain it its anger. After all what would challenge it now. What could challenge it in a democracy? The entire system was then warped around this outraged, and forced to ‘Get it’. That is was forced to behave as if this outrage was itself normal and logical, and not merely he hysteria of a baying mob.
The problem of course is that we are all going to have to live in the consequences of this outrage. That is we are going to all have to live with the consequences of this constructed self evidence. .Remember that political parties war the initial creation of a scandal three hundred years ago and more. Parliament is a place where scandal has long terms effects. The one of gearing them of elements to create a self evident ‘story’ will be a legacy that in one form or other subsequent generations we know and feel. Let us hope they liked the fact that we strove so hard to ‘get it’.
