With the Rifkind/Straw ‘debacle‘ surfacing, the ‘great-and-the-good-know-it-all’ have lost no time in airing their views on the matter. Witness: Paul Goodman on ConservativeHome; Douglas Murray in The Speccie; and John Lehal on PublicAffairs.

Goodman writes that: We want MPs who don’t earn outside the Commons and aren’t paid more by the taxpayer and are people of real ability. But it’s impossible to have all three at once – but does not realise that it is not impossible. Douglas Murray believes that MPs have too little to do and aren’t paid enough – and on what I presume he considers a ‘pittance’ they have to run two homes. John Lehal seems either not ‘taken aback’ or ‘surprised’ at quite a lot that most people would be about how MPs ‘load’ their basic salary – even though he does admit that the fact MPs have little to do is due to the fact their predecessors off-loaded most of their duties to Brussels.

Not one of these geniuses (or genii) appears to be aware that each of the problems about which they write is quite easily solved by the introduction of direct democracy. Reading the articles linked to above, it is quite easy to see how the salaries of MPs can be controlled by the people; it is quite easy to see how the ‘behaviour’ of MPs can be controlled by the people; in fact it is quite easy to see how all the problems that our ‘great-and-good-know-it-all’ talking heads pontificate about can be addressed.

Problem solving really is quite simple if one engages brain.