Letter: Give expense-ive MPs the chop

Correspondent • Published 1 Nov 2009 08:00 0 Comments

BY 1794 Robespierre, the leader of the infamous Committee for Public Safety, had reportedly consigned over 53,000 to the guillotine because, essentially, they were enemies of the state.

This was enshrined in edict law passed by the committee that in so many words said that to be accused was to be automatically guilty.

In that year he was challenged and remarked, "I have done nothing illegal." He was shot in the mouth and then guillotined.

He was right, he had done nothing illegal and in law, nothing wrong because he made the laws. In 2009 the entire House of Commons was accused of fiddling their expenses and their excuse? "We have done nothing illegal and therefore nothing wrong!"

Which is correct, they made the rules under which they worked. Not one of them can be accused in law.

The French philosopher Georges Santayana is the one who famously said, "Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it." How right he was.

Anthony Pollock

Reading Road, Reading

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