The example set by MPs

There has been much in the news during the last few months on the apparent need for Parliament to clean up its act in order for it to set a good example to the public, a subject discussed by the really quite adorable Reverend Richard Coles - possibly Britain's only truly cool vicar - on yesterday's Daily Politics TV programme in his typically eloquent way.

Reverend Richard Coles - possibly Britain's only truly cool vicar.

MPs and their ethics, of lack thereof, has of course been the topic of a million news reports and probably even more blog posts (a sizable percentage of them here on Acid Rabbi). Rev. Coles is in a very good position to comment upon the supposed failure of Parliament to provide the electorate with moral guidance because of his position in the Church of England, an organisation that also once served in such a capacity but which has seen its authority all but vanish within the last couple of generations. But why did the public feel that they no longer needed to look to the Church for an ethical example? After all, a surprisingly large section of the population still believe in God - when asked, more than 70% will describe themselves as Christian (0.7% list their beliefs as Jedi - which amusingly outnumbers the 0.5% of us who are Jews).

Perhaps, in these days when almost all of us benefit from an education and access to a far larger amount of information than ever before, we feel that we are capable of deciding for ourselves. Most of us have well-formed values and morals of our own and will make our own minds up when confronted with decisions.

According to a 2007 BBC survey, 83% of the public believe that Britain is in a moral decline. Yet that same surveys reveals that 92% of people would stop to help a stranger who had collapsed in the street. Interestingly, 97% of those who claimed to have no religion said they'd help in this way, compared to 92% among those who claimed to be Christian.

Imagine that you are walking past a cash machine when it suddenly ejects a £20 note. What would you do? In April this year, a couple were sentenced after they took £61,000 from just such a cash machine. Wondering whether this was an indication that the British are indeed no longer to be trusted, the Times decided to carry out an experiment in which a reporter visited cash machines, withdrew £20 and then walked away without taking the money to see if passers-by or the next person in the queue would pocket the cash. The experiment was carried out four times in London's Moorgate and on each occasion the next person in the queue caught up with the reporter and handed over the money. In Shoreditch, one man kept the £20, another returned it. In Islington, the reporter tried it twice - both times, the money was returned to him. The same thing happened in Portsmouth, even though the reporter spent two hours playing the same trick. Six people in Cheshire did likewise, and again in Wilmslow even though the reporter pretended not to hear the person trying to get their attention. "It's just a case of behaving as you'd want people to behave to you," said one Cheshire resident.

In Gateshead, in the same month, a high street branch of Barclays was left unlocked overnight by contractors. The first person to discover the mistake immediately alerted the police. A similar incident took place at a North Yorkshire branch of HSBC in February. We read often of elderly people being mugged and beaten, but little of the hundreds of thousands of people in this country involved in charitable work to raise funds to improve old people's lives, nor those who work in jobs supporting them. Every British town has at least one charity shop, staffed by volunteers giving up their own time to help some deserving cause or another. These are hard economic times for many of us, yet we gave £1.3 billion to charities in the financial year 2007-08.

If we no longer need the Church as a moral compass, do we need politicians to set us a good example? Are they even in a position to do so?

Do we need the church as a moral compass anymore? It seems that many people do not, and will act in a trustworthy and charitable manner simply because they choose to do so. Do we need politicians to set us a good example or, as well-informed adults, are we capable of making our own decisions and living out lives in a way that we decide for ourselves? Besides, aren't MPs supposed to be our servants rather than rulers teaching us lowly and simple common folk how to live in the correct way?

Unethical Holidays

So-called 'ethical holidays' have become all the rage amongst hippies, lefties and the sort of people who read The Guardian in recent years. Typical examples include the following:

• Two weeks in Mauritius helping conservationists move endangered turtle eggs to a safe nature reserve where they'll be protected from poachers.
• A month in Peru, helping to build medical centres for poor kiddie with nasty diseases.
• Six days with a non-religious mission in Sao Paolo, educating street children on the dangers of gangs, guns and drugs.

However, many people require a little more excitement on their hard-earned break from the drudgery of work. These people will welcome the latest trend, Unethical Holidays.

Travel

By booking a holiday with Unethical Holidays, you are guaranteed to travel on a Boeing 747 that has been specially adapted to produce as much pollution as possible. Just to make it an even more tempting way to travel, you will be the only passenger on the plane, therefore instantly increasing your carbon footprint to the size of China's. All Unethical Holidays aircraft have been modified with the addition of bomb doors, enabling you to drop the pollutants of your choice (benzene and uranium are popular, as are Big Macs, country and western CDs and other objects likely to act as a seed for American culture) into environmentally-sensitive areas. Upon arrival, you will be taken to your hotel in a sedan chair carried by crippled orphans. And just in case you're worried that a sedan chair sounds like a non-polluting way to travel, all Unethical Holidays chairs are fitted with a detuned internal combustion engine. The engine serves no purpose other than belching out unburnt hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide, some of which are pumped straight into the faces of the crippled orphans as they carry you.

Happy Unethical Holidays customers show off some sort of animal they've just enjoyed killing.

Activities

Unethical Holidays include a range of fun activities to keep you and your family entertained during your break. Some of the more popular examples include:

• Seal Clubbing. Venture out onto the Canadian ice-floes with our professional hunters, club a few baby fur seals and have the skins made into your very own fur coat to take home as a souvenir of your holiday.
• Whale harpooning. No need to worry if you don't fancy eating whale meat, you can just harpoon them for fun! Save your appetite for when you get back to the hotel, where you can dine in our luxury restaurant that serves only hamburgers made from cattle guaranteed to have been raised on land that was, until recently, virgin rainforest.
• Track the rare Golden Marmoset. Spend three days travelling in the jungle, enjoying the comfort of your own personal SUV, provided by Unethical Holidays. There are only ten to twenty Golden Marmosets left in the wild - and when you see one, you can shoot it.
• Beggar kicking. Spend a whole day in the most deprived areas of a Third World city kicking beggars. Unethical Holidays will supply you with protective clothing so you can even kick lepers!
• Whip-bearer at a Chinese power-station construction site. Unethical Holidays will fit you out with protective clothing and breathing equipment so you can enjoy whipping the entirely-unprotected labourers building another fantastic coal-fuelled station. All labourers are either political prisoners or Korean immigrants.
• Heroin Dealing. One of Unethical Holidays' most popular entertainments, you get to spend a whole day selling this popular illegal drug (cut with powdered bleach) to poor children in city slums.

Unethical Holidays do all the hard work for you, you can just relax and enjoy the fun. What's more, all the entertainments are available at all of the holiday locations - for example, if you decide you'd like to club some seals while at Unethical Holidays' Peruvian resort as a change from Golden Marmoset tracking, don't worry. Unethical Holidays will charter an aeroplane to import a selection of seals for you to club!

Seal clubbing is an especially popular entertainment with younger customers. Here's little Tommy Braithwaite's favourite memory of his holiday .

Previous Unethical Holidaymakers Statements

• "Unethical Holidays are just fuckin' awesome, man! I had the best two weeks of my life culling mountain gorillas in Uganda! I'll be going back next year if they ain't extinct by then!" (Billy-Bob McInbreed, Texas, USA)
• "We really can't speak more highly of this company. When fox-hunting was banned here in Britain, my wife and I really thought we'd have to give up our favourite hobby. However, Unethical Holidays flew a complete hunt with horses and hounds to an East European country where we spent a happy fortnight chasing foxes and watching the hounds rip them to pieces!" (Charles Windsor, UK)
• "Now that my country has been taken over by darkies, I'm not allowed to shoot them. Unethical Holidays arranged for me to travel to war-torn Eritrea, where for just a few dollars starving black families will happily sell me their children to shoot as I please! Thank you, Unethical Holidays!" (Hans van der Vogt, S. Africa)