Out of tune

It has been a rich month for satirists. But when we have all done laughing at chaps so down on their luck they only have one moat to clean (which is very nearly as shaming as having to buy your own furniture) and when our snorts of glee about gigantic plasma tellies, bath plugs and doggie food die away, what will we be left with? The shipwreck of democracy, that's what.

It was a nice idea, that voting lark, and it was very good of all those people in our history to fight for it as hard as they did. It looked so '“ well, so reasonable didn't it? The majority in a community choose a fellow citizen to represent them in the legislature; a job for which he or she is paid a living wage, where the privileges more or less balance out the responsibilities, and the job description is of interest '“ making and scrutinizing the laws under which we are all to live. The working environment is pleasant '“ rather lovely rooms, good libraries, and competent research assistants (although your indigent sons are best avoided).

The payback is that the elected member has to be more or less decent, legal and honest, and should put in the hours on their constituents' problems as well as thinking independently from time to time. Oh, and they should stick by not only the letter of the law but '“ as they make the bleeding stuff '“ the spirit too.

Fast and loose

Instead of that fairly straightforward contract we have absurdity. The etymology of absurd is from the Latin for 'out of tune' '“ something hard to listen to, that does not accord with what should be '“ something that grates. And it grates that the compilers of the Fraud Act 2006, under which income support claimants are prosecuted because they do a job on the side to eke out their benefit, play fast and loose with their own representations.

A false representation, under the Fraud Act, is one which is untrue or misleading, where the maker of it knows that it is or might be untrue or misleading. Such as that the purchase of an item is necessary for the conduct of parliamentary business or was a legitimate expense directly related to the job when it was nothing of the sort. But prosecutions will depend on the provable existence of dishonesty rather than folly or greed. A child with an insatiable lust for sweets who also has the great good luck to employ a sweetshop owner who does not like saying no is not dishonest, although he will certainly not grow up to be John Stuart Mill.

Our venerable DPP Keir Starmer is living in interesting times, and he and the police will settle that question. But for the rest of the electorate what remains? After the giggles and the headlines, what will remain of our involvement in democracy? How far will the voting figures fall? How more alienated can people get? Quite apart from the shame of it '“ imagine the Mother of Parliaments with a social mandate of under 30 per cent voting turnout '“ the less interest there is in Parliament and what it gets up to, the worse it is for justice.