Enough's enough!

POT AND KETTLE II
Rose Galt challenges the Daily Telegraph's new status as guardian of probity

We should be more concerned about Aung San Suu Kyi

At the risk of being shot down by the massed snipers in the trees, I feel the urge to put my head over the parapet and say: enough already! Stop!
     In the great scheme of things and in light of happenings in other parts of the forest, the dishonesty of a handful of MPs – utterly reprehensible as the moat and the duck house undoubtedly are – doesn't amount to a hill of beans.
     The Daily Telegraph has been cast in the role of purer-than-pure guardian of the probity of our institutions, the saviour of the moral core of the nation. Never mind its reclusive owners, the Barclay brothers. Never mind its failure to distinguish between (a) legitimate and illegitimate expenses and allowances and (b) the guilty and the innocent or indeed to attempt to quantify the amount of fraudulently claimed taxpayers' money against, say, the perfectly legal tax avoidance manoeuvres of many of the leaders in our commercial and corporate life.
     None of that, however, matters very much. What does is that truly horrendous events unfolding in our increasingly mutually-dependent world are being accorded disgracefully little attention while we indulge in media-orchestrated navel-gazing.
     Here are just a few: in Burma Aung San Suu Kyi is being tried on a trumped-up charge so that her 20-year house arrest can be further extended – yet another blow to democracy in Burma; thousands of men, women and children are being starved, raped and killed throughout Africa, particularly in the Sudan and the Congo; yet more bombs in Pakistan raise the spectre of a nuclear-armed country becoming a failed state; men and women who happen to be gay are beaten up in the streets of Moscow on the day of the Eurovision Song Contest, compered – irony of ironies – by Graham Norton; and, of course, we have the cheering news that North Korea has tested two nuclear weapons and abandoned its 60-year-old truce with its southern neighbour. And I haven't even mentioned the collapsing economy or swine flu.
     According to the political pundits, the beneficiaries of the noses-in-the-trough scandal in this week's English county and European Parliament elections could be the BNP. In a leap of logic of breathtaking proportions, it seems that it is now seriously suggested that it is reasonable to express one's disgust at dishonesty and greed by voting for a racist party. Talking of the European elections, in a little noted move, David Cameron has announced his intention of taking the Tory group of MEPs out of the central right alliance in Brussels – those well-known socialists Merkel, Sarkosy and Berlusconi – and seek allies among the anti-EU, extreme right-wing nationalist parties from Eastern Europe whose social policies have their origins in the dark ages.
     To conclude: while I would have very severe reservations about ever voting Labour again in the Scottish or UK contest, I will happily do so on Thursday to do my very little bit towards helping to ensure that as a world we halt our dangerous regression into the politics of self-interest and hatred. There are some things infinitely more important than MPs trousering a few thousand pounds more than they are entitled to.