MP's Expenses (again) and Fairness

One word keeps popping into my head over the MP’s expenses scandal: fairness. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting their treatment has been unfair but because of the way some of them are being disciplined (or asked to pay money back) and others aren’t, it does seem that the experts called in to sort out the sorry saga are only making it worse.
I have no sympathy for all those who got on the gravy train and rode is as hard and fast as they could. But I do feel that when (some) people acted in good faith within the rules and checked again and again that their arrangements were approved, then it is hard to punish them retrospectively.
However, it’s also scandalous that some MP’s appear to be going to get away with huge cons – as in avoidance of capital gains tax, flipping homes, and, it seems, acquiring additional homes that they get to keep at our expense.
So I would just put in a simple word for fairness. All should be treated equally. If retrospective payments are to be required of the few, they should also be of the many. If some people are being required to pay back a few thousand pounds, how does that make it right that others are getting away with profiteering on a much bigger scale?
It’s all a big muddle at the moment, but one think I’ve learned over years of counselling is that unfairness can be the cause of huge turmoil.
Young people, for instance, (and this applies to the tiny ones as well as the troubled teens) can be deeply affected by situations they deem unfair. If they’re told off for something they know is not their fault, or if they’re misunderstood or misrepresented, or not listened to, they can develop a deep sense of injustice. If this happens often, they begin to feel the whole world is against them, and resentment can fester. More often than not, this leads to them acting out or playing up, simply because they’ve learned this is what’s expected of them (even when they’ve not been guilty) so they just conform to other peoples’ expectations of them. This, obviously then leads to more rows, more shouting and on to more bad behaviour.
It’s all so obvious really, isn’t it?
But it seems we need constant reminding that if we want people to perform to their best, they need to feel they’re treated fairly.
I dare say this whole expenses fiasco could have been avoided if only the MP’s had realised long ago that we the public would not have deemed many/most of their expense allowances fair.

Goldman Sachs Bonus Culture and MP's Expenses........still they don't 'get it'

How are we ever to address our broken society until those in power, and well-paid jobs , learn how it must feel to be totally powerless and poor, or unemployed.
I know we don’t learn empathy in school......but i would surely help if we did? If only our MP’s could understand that most of us, let alone those on benefits, would give anything to be able to afford cleaners and gardeners. And that the idea of having these services paid for by somebody else (ie the tax-payer) sounds really too good to be true. After all, most of us manage to do our own cleaning and gardening. And we fit it in around our full-time jobs....so why are MP’s so different, many might ask.
And this is the point, surely, that MP’s (or many of them at least ) seem to have become detached from the rest of society. They’ve been gradually seduced by their ‘allowances’ into feeling entitled to a grander life-style, with better pay and more luxuries than the rest of us. And this is surely why we’re finding it hard to forgive them for transgressions or understand their current petty grievances.
And something similar seems to have been going on with the bankers who have gradually grown so accustomed to their own extravagant expectations, that they’re jumping back on the bonus gravy train at the earliest possible moment, even though it seems indecently early to the rest of us.
If only they too could put themselves in other peoples’ shoes.....not the shoes of the poorest, necessarily, just the shoes of the everyday working man and woman whose average salary is around £24,000. These people, the majority after all, can only dream of having half a million pounds and probably never will even if they slog their guts out for a lifetime. The idea that some fat cats who happen to work in the financial sector can expect such hand-outs once a year purely for doing their jobs is what sticks in the gullet. I can’t help wondering how we’ve got to the stage that some people feel this is their entitlement. How did banking salaries and bonuses become so out of skew with the rest of us?
And what do these people who are in receipt of such huge amounts of money think about the rest of us who aren’t? Do they ever stop and give a thought to how they’re reinforcing a great divide in society? How what they feel to be ‘appropriate’ rewards feel like greed to the rest of us?
Don’t you just wish that for once, a banker would speak out and express some guilt or at least humility? That one of them would acknowledge publicly that such rewards probably contribute to resentment amongst those less fortunate....and how damaging that can be? How refreshing would that be?
And the same goes for MP’s. Wouldn’t it be refreshing if one of them really spoke the truth for a change and acknowledged that they’ve become far too easily accustomed to a lifestyle which is way out of sight for most of their constituents. And that anyone who’s so out of touch can hardly be expected to know how to govern in the interests of the majority.
Then we might begin to feel they ‘get it’.