Responsibility

The press is obsessed with the latest revelations that - surprise surprise, Westminster MPs are (ab)using their privileges to claim taxpayers' money for expenses which, although "within the rules", they probably shouldn't be claiming on moral grounds.

Whilst the constant coverage of this topic bores me to tears, the subject of morality in politics is an interesting one.

I went to see a series of short plays at the weekend called "The Great Game", which was about the history of the "War in Afghanistan" up to the present day. I have to admit that I was not up to date at all on the situation in Afghanistan - the whole subject had become a bit like Iraq for me, i.e. a series of repetitively negative news stories that I felt it best to, at least partially, ignore in order to preserve my peace of mind.

The play was really engaging and it became clear that morality is the central issue in the Afghanistan story, impossible to sidestep, however inconvenient it may be. It seems clearcut that it would be 'immoral' to withdraw military presence in Afghanistan while the (morally corrupt) Taliban controls about 50% of the country. But at the same time, each soldier has to justify morally his reasons for going back on tour after tour of duty, while his loved ones live in constant fear. 

And it is more complicated when there is more than one moral viewpoint around the same question - e.g. is it 'moral' to destroy Afghan poppy fields to prevent opium production or would it be better to encourage the fields to grow if it can be guaranteed that the resulting wealth will mean improvements to the poor living standards of ordinary Afghan villagers? Perhaps if the moral issues had been considered a long time ago, such dilemmas wouldn't exist in the first place and the focus of the world's attention would be elsewhere.

The MPs expenses question is so much simpler - there is no question that it is morally wrong to abuse taxpayers' money. But there is also a wider moral point to be made about the reporting of such revelations - for example, does the press have a moral obligation to include some coverage of positive work done by the government or by MPs, even if they fear they won't sell as many papers? Is it the role of the press to scrutinise parliament only in a negative way? Does the press not have a moral duty to focus the collective consciousness on positive developments, especially in times of economic gloom? And anyway, who is scrunitising the moral practices of the press? Is it 'moral' for the Daily Mail to encourage a "them vs us" mentality towards ethnic minorities in the UK? And what about the Daily Telegraph hosting a blog by a BNP councillor, in which he gets to rant about how opposing the incitement of hatred towards immigrants is "political correctness". Is that not morally represensible and in need of scrutiny?

Personally, I'm glad that the media has pressurised Westminster into improving its MPs expenses policy - but I'd really like the press to take some moral responsibility by telling us about something good for a change. There is a lot of good work being done by MPs that we never hear about, unless we are geeky enough to watch BBC Parliament or read Hansard. And maybe if the public were focussed on positive issues, the answers to moral questions in quagmires like Afghanistan and Iraq would appear more obvious - in the absence of gloom, there is more clarity and mistakes can perhaps be more easily avoided from the outset.