Our view is that, generally, if you're any good at anything you'll be out making a go of it in the real world - making things, employing people - and not hoovering up the publicly-funded swill in your never-ending trough.
There are one or two genuine public servants, but most MPs... well, would you employ them? Would you even let them into your house?
From recent personal experience, Tony McNulty MP is a particularly irritating buffoon, a gold-plated, XXXL, widescreen version of the species.
Ask any police officer - if you can find one - and he or she will tell you that our book Wasting Police Time is the unvarnished, unspun, unadulterated truth about the shambles that is the modern British criminal justice system.
Tony McNulty is the police minister. He ought to be 'in touch' with the troops on the ground. But like all the other gravy-trainers, he'd rather obscure and obfuscate.
Here's what he said in the House of Commons recently, when challenged about the book: "I would not believe PC David Copperfield... that is more of a fiction than Dickens."
We wrote to McNumpty and warned him that if he ever said that outside the cosy confines of the HoC we would sue him for libel. Thus far, he's kept his trap shut.
Two points about Tony McNulty:
1. He never uses the letter 'g'. Lyin'. Cheatin'. Scroungin'. You get the picture.
2. He's most unlikely to be woken up in the middle of the night by the people next door playing Whitney Houston at full blast. He won't be mugged by crackheads on his grotty housing estate. And he won't get stabbed to death for confronting youths who are vandalising his car.
The sad truth is, politicians are insulated from the consequences of their cock-ups.
Here's an excerpt from Wasting Police Time which makes that point:
A LAND FIT FOR CRIMINALS
I'm sure lots of you, like me, are kept awake at night by the idea that some of our prisons are overcrowded.
It's certainly been worrying Lord Chief Justice Phillips of Worth Matravers lately.
Recently, his lordship suggested that offenders should only be sent to jail 'as a last resort' and that they should really be rehabilitated in the community.
I think they should be rehabilitated chez Phillips, where Lady Phillips can keep an eye on the family silver and Lord Phillips can develop a better understanding of what persistent acquisitive criminals are really like.
To understand how bad things really are, I recommend reading A Land Fit For Criminals by David Fraser. Fraser is a former probation officer who's had personal experience of dealing with a large number of criminals. His basic thesis is that, in order fully to protect the public, we need to lock up a minimum of 225,000 people (the current maximum is 80,000) and we need a police force about four times the size that it is now. I disagree with the latter part of this thesis, for reasons I'll explain later, but I'm fully onside with the first part.
He firmly believes that prison works, and that all attempts to reform criminals in the community are dangerous experiments which put the public at risk. Not only that, but community service doesn't work: people don't turn up, and when they do they don't really do what they're supposed to. Jail, on the other hand, is a cast-iron guarantee that the public, and their property, are safe from criminals. While they're inside, they can get certificates in all sorts of things, from woodwork to 'enhanced thinking' (really), but they can't creep into your house at night and steal your TV.
It's a fact, despite what LCJ Phillips says or thinks, that jailing an 18-year-old for six to 12 years for his third burglary dwelling would ensure the public were protected from literally hundreds of offences.
Fraser reserves special criticism for the probation service, which he says is dedicated to keeping criminals out of jail, and for the civil servants who have consistently viewed jail as counterproductive. He leans rather too much on the fact that most people don't always report crime to the police, something that is undoubtedly true but which at the same time detracts from the sound arguments in the rest of the book, but it's a recommended read for all that.
Back to chez Phillips. I've no idea where the LCJ's houses are (he's probably got several) or what they're like, but I'll hazard a guess. They will be nice, big pads in low crime areas. They will have walls around them, and plenty of open ground that burglars have to cross before they get to the alarmed and well-made windows. He'll probably have a dog or two, and possibly a live-in housekeeper. The local nick will know exactly where he is and they will be on tenterhooks in case they get a call to get out there (if he hasn't got a panic button or some sort of direct comm-link). His neighbours will be charming people with diverse interests, large cars and lots of antique furniture. If he encounters muggers, burglars or general ne'er-do-wells (outside his professional life) it will only be because of extreme carelessness on his part.
He won't be offered out in the back garden of the King's Head, after drinking nine pints of Stella, because he brushed someone's arm.
Now ask yourself: when it comes to deciding on how criminals should be dealt with, is Lord Chief Justice Phillips of Where's Matrousers a chap you trust?
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