The ex-leader of the SNP, Alex ‘Five Pensions’ Salmond, has scrounged nearly £100,000 from the people to help him in an impending legal case. How shameless can you get?
In the ancient world, it was commonplace for the wealthy to massage their reputations by magnanimous public gestures — providing the cash to build a library or a school, for example. The 5th-century bc thinker Democritus reckoned that there was nothing like the rich giving to the poor to produce concord that strengthened the community.
For politicians, it was essential. The Greek orator Hyperides (4th century bc) argued that the Athenians allowed statesman and soldiers to make large ‘personal profits’, provided they ‘are used in the people’s interests, not against them’. A Roman working his way up the greasy pole would at one stage become an aedile, one of whose responsibilities was to organise and oversee both public and private games — chariot races, gladiatorial contests and the like.
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