And to think, they say it's 16-year-olds who can't be trusted
Fleet Street Fox
13:40, 06 Nov 2017Updated 13:54, 06 Nov 2017
If any one of us walked into work drunk, groped a colleague, assaulted a visitor and suggested to an intern that they supply sexual favours for career advancement, the boss would assume we were mad.
We might be offered help, we might be told firmly to sober up, or we might get sent home. It's unlikely we'd be offered the chance to refer ourselves to the police, engage lawyers to defend our shaky reputations, or that our denials would be met with anything other than sarcastic laughter.
But there's one rule for us, and another for the Louses of Parliament. And in Pestminster there is a different breed of worker - one who demands cheap booze during office hours, to have groping allegations quietly swept under the carpet, where sexual favours are demanded along with fresh paperclips and a pension.
This weekend it was announced Sainsbury's had banned its night shift workers from having toast on their breaks.
That's despite the fact the staff toasted stale bread that couldn't be sold, the store was locked, and there's nowhere else to buy food at 2am in an industrial park.
But the Sainsbury's staff have to put up with it, because that's a rule imposed by the boss without whom they have no job.
If you suggest toast in Westminster it means something else(Image: Getty Images)
But in Pestminster they don't get out-of-date-toast.
They get a £3.85 wild mushroom panna cotta with pickled golden beetroot, watercress and beetroot wafer, followed by a chargrilled sirloin steak with hand cut chips, tomato, mushrooms and béarnaise sauce for £8.65.
And there's a separate menu just for cheese.
They complain about the noise of the kitchen, the coldness of the chips, the unsatisfactory manner in which their croque monsieur is produced.
But then, it's not Sainsbury's.
There's proper public access to a Sainsbury's(Image: Getty Images Europe)
It is instead the place which regularly debates alcohol pricing, saying how cheap booze causes crime, anti-social behaviour and problems for the emergency services.
In 2012 then Home Secretary Theresa May vowed to tackle the "corrosive effect" of binge drinking, with new laws passed which meant local councils could fine outlets selling alcohol late at night to pay for the costs of policing.
She also launched a consultation - so far without legislative follow-up - into a "sensible and appropriate" minimum price for alcohol.
And in the House of Commons bars you can get a pint for £3.70, a 20% reduction on prices charged outside the building.
It must be a coincidence that there seems to be 20% more sex pests in the House of Commons.
FYI, alcohol changes your mood - not your wiring(Image: Getty)
Across the country workers who have saved for retirement are being told the company pensions won't be as generous as expected, because people are living too long.
In the House of Commons, analysis showed that their recent £7,000 pay rise meant MPs all got a £85,000 boost to their pension pots.
And they didn't have to leave the generous final salary pension scheme and actually start contributing themselves, unless they were 52 or older.
To top it off, they're taking £10billion from the pensions of former British Coal miners to prop up the Tories' disastrous bookkeeping.
But then, being in Parliament isn't quite the same as being down the pit.
"Well Jack, it's hard work but at least we can be sure that our future pensions will be robbed by sex pests fuelled by cheap alcohol."(Image: Getty)
In ordinary places of work all over the country, terror targets or not, there is regular, mass public access. People troop in and out of the BBC, council offices, museums, the London Eye, and thousands of other spaces which are public simply because they OUGHT to be.
There's bag checks and security cameras and whatever is needed - but you or I can walk in, no appointment necessary.
You can do the same in Parliament, just so long as there's not too many of you, you explain why you're there, you're not going to complain too loudly about anything and you're not drunk.
Even the Queen lets you traipse through her garden, but the MPs are a little more picky when it comes to the public.
"Oh we don't let MPs in here. Just one of them, once a week, under strict conditions."(Image: PA)
And then there's getting to be an MP - from some of the reports this week it's clear that whatever party you may gravitate towards you'll do better, quicker, if your morals gravitate downwards.
You could go to any local consitutency association and say you want to apply for the job of MP, and you won't even be given a form.
You might get to stuff some envelopes, spend years canvassing, get on to the borough council, but you probably won't get to Westminster.
But you'll have to throw in some over-arching arrogance, alleged sexual deviancy and a personal fortune if you really want to hit your political stride.
That doesn't work at Sainsbury's, or indeed anywhere that doesn't seek to churn out future Bond villains(Image: Getty)
In your office there is a personnel manager. There is a complaints procedure and if someone does something unpleasant but not criminal - like putting his hand on your knee six times and giving up only after you threaten to punch his lights out - you can put the wind up him so he doesn't do it again without forcing his resignation.
But MPs are a different creature. Like the pigs in Animal Farm they have told us we are oppressed, that we can trust them to run things properly, and then slowly but surely they have placed themselves above us.
"Sensible and appropriate" alcohol pricing means us paying more so we don't behave badly, while last year they froze the prices of the beer we pay for them to drink.
Pay cuts and freezes for us meant a rise for them; lower pensions for us meant higher spending for them; and transparency and public access for us means, for them, obfuscation and keeping the public at arm's length.
They even threw out attempts to impose a personnel department on them, on the basis as one former MP claimed to me last week they're "self-employed".
I wonder how that would work if employees tried it anywhere else?(Image: National News)
The sleaze currently blocking Westminster's pipes like a fatberg of slime and used condoms is just another example of how little Theresa May is capable of understanding, or doing.
In her 2016 foreword to her Ministerial Code, the standards of behaviour expected of her Cabinet, she wrote: "The values it promotes should underpin our conduct as we tackle the challenges of our times and seek to build that fairer Britain, a country of genuine opportunity for all where everyone plays by the same rules."
Had she meant it, or been capable of enforcing it, she would have sacked every minister that's admitted wrongdoing, hauled in everyone accused for a showdown, and told her party and the country at large that up with this she would not put.
She hasn't. She didn't. She won't.
And nor will he(Image: )
Instead they'll keep their separate rules on sexual misdemeanours, immorality, personnel issues, pay, pensions, booze, and job applications not because it's right but because they won't let us into the big house unless we join their club.
They are paid OUR money to represent OUR wishes, yet all they seem capable of embodying are their own baser instincts - to line their pockets, fill their stomachs, and tell the rest of us we can't expect so much as a slice of stale toast.
That's not democracy. It's a disgrace.
And to think, they say it's the 16-year-olds who can't be trusted.