Ritual media revealed this week that Sir Geoffrey Cox, a Conservative MP, had been charged with a conflict of interest. The Guardian reports that “within months of making more than £ 40,000 [$ 53,500] with tax haven-based law firms, he was lobbying against the imposition of tighter financial regulation in the Cayman Islands Cox is not an isolated incident, it follows that of MP Owen Paterson, who was forced to resign.
His colleagues in the party, “UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, expressed his confidence in integrity.” I really believe, “Johnson insisted,” that Britain is not remotely corrupt, nor do I believe our institutions are corrupt Context The Guardian summarizes the nature of the scandal as “a series of claims about MPs’ lucrative second jobs and whether they create conflicts of interest.” How the hell, it seems t wondering Johnson, do self-proclaimed moralists imagine that making large sums of money from other sources could affect the integrity of civil servants?
Don’t you know how billionaire Donald Trump stressed during his presidential campaign in the United States that good governance can only be exercised by people who are so rich in money that they can think and act completely independently? The extra income is precisely to ensure that they are not influenced by the pressure often felt by people who have no idea where their next meal is coming from. Reaffirming what many Western politicians like to call the basic tenet of their civilization – the ethic of a “rule-based order” – Johnson reiterated his belief that the solution would simply be the rules. “I think there are cases where MPs have unfortunately broken the rules in the past.
“The most important thing is that those who break the rules must be investigated and punished.” His distinction between “must” (be investigated) and “should” (punished) alone would be worth investigating. Johnson insisted that “it is critical that MPs obey the rules” by primarily caring for their voters and avoiding ‘paid promotion’. “Paid advertising is synonymous with lobbying. Paterson decided to step down, which could be described as a way to obey the rules, saying that he openly “ran the government on behalf of two companies that paid him over £ 100,000 a year.”
How indiscreet! American politicians, for example Senator Joe Manchin, Paterson’s amateurism can only surprise you: in a democracy, unlike the British monarchy, there is no upper class that believes that traditions allow them to abuse their privileges. American ingenuity has created much more sophisticated ways of doing this: it works through campaign funding and revolving doors, the use of inside information, or, as in Manchin’s case, a significant stake in companies that may be targeted by legislation or getting your daughter named CEO. from a pharmaceutical company. Regarding the scandal of 44 US lawmakers “who failed to adequately report their financial transactions under the Congressional Knowledge Stop Trading Act of 2012, also known as the STOCK Act,” Business Insider reports that ethics “vigilantes and even some members of Congress have called for tougher sanctions or even a ban on federal legislators from negotiating individual measures when both have not been respected. “
