Portrayal of MoM in the series

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 178820

Alla:
> You do not get an argument from me that this is wrong in any event
> and corruption of power. But let's put it this way, I consider the
> kind of corruption of power that is shown here to be the **least**
> harmful of all others that I see from Ministry officials.

> Arthur wanted to play with the car. So he left a loophole. Yeah, bad
> Arthur, as I said good people get sucked in the atmopshere of
> corrupted society too and to some extend may become corrupted as
> well.

Ceridwen:
I totally agree that this shows how deep the corruption runs.  Even 
good people like Arthur get sucked in.  I don't think this is bad in 
this society.  I think their standards are different from ours.  
Arthur could have done much more, to include confiscating 
Muggle "artifacts" from Obliviated Muggles - cameras, cell phones - 
the Muggles might have recorded whatever it was they were Obliviated 
for witnessing.  Muggleborns and Half-bloods in the Ministry could 
alert their colleagues to the potential of these devices.  We don't 
know that Arthur or his colleagues didn't write such laws, but we 
don't know that they did, either.  Yes, the corruption could have 
been much worse.

I'm more interested in your thread (and thank you for starting it!) 
in maybe discussing the corruption, not just in the Ministry, but in 
the society that tolerates this sort of mismanagement decade after 
decade.  If the rot in the Ministry goes so deep, what must the rest 
of society be like?  People tolerate a lot of things if they think 
they'll get some sort of pay-back, or maybe someone turning a blind 
eye when they do something dodgy.

Alla:
Arthur on the other hand tried to protect Muggles contrary to some
of his colleagues. He is NOT in Lucius' Malfoy pocket as for 
example...

Ceridwen:
Right.  Arthur isn't nearly as corrupt as his colleagues.  In fact, I 
would say that he's probably considered to be a straight-arrow, maybe 
even a little priggish, like Percy in his own way.  Still, if the 
best can be suckered into crafting laws, or in this case a law, which 
benefit them, then it isn't that Arthur did something slightly wrong 
in the eyes of his society, to me it's more that he's merely acting 
in an approved and acceptible manner.

Alla:
Laws? As in plural? What other law did Arthur wrote to benefit
himself? 

Ceridwen:
Arthur is capable of either writing laws or of suggesting laws to 
some legislative body we don't know about.  He spent years in that 
one position.  I think it's unlikely he only wrote one law.  The 
books are written from Harry's POV, and without much that isn't only 
what Harry knows.  If Harry doesn't know about a law or a custom, 
then we don't either, until or unless Harry finds out.  Another law 
would not have had any effect on the story or on world-building, 
probably, so was not created in the story.  If we're looking at a 
world that, in the stories, is outside of Harry's experience, I would 
say that Arthur has probably written more than one law.  YMMV, of 
course.

Alla:
Oh, yes, Umbridge. Good example that is. I do not see Arthur's
writing the law that would stop werewolves from getting work for
example.

Ceridwen:
Neither do I.  I was using Umbridge as an example of the sorts of 
laws to "benefit" certain privileged people (in her case, wizards 
over werewolves) which could be written by former DEs who would be 
following the same course as Arthur.  Not moral course, naturally!  
But the course of writing laws with loopholes which benefit them.  
It's the practice itself that is corrupt.  As rot, it is not good no 
matter who writes a law with personally beneifical loopholes, in my 
opinion.

Alla:
Not that I dispute that his expenses are high, but where did you get
that his pay is not low. Isn't his department considered the least
prestigious and didn't he just got promoted in HBP?

Ceridwen:
If Rowling is writing even slightly realistically, I believe she 
would show the usual practices of the workplace, government or 
private.  Arthur may get lower wages than the head of a more 
glamorous department, but he is still the head of a department.  He 
has been at the Ministry for more than twenty years if he began 
working there before Bill was born.  He has a management position, 
which usually gets a salary, and he has tenure.  He would get the big 
bucks in his department, higher than any employee below him (I can't 
think of the old guy's name now).  He also gets the managerial 
headaches that this larger and fixed salary is supposed to compensate 
him for: very long days, being bothered at home or called away from 
his holiday meal or his bed.  We've seen him working long hours and I 
think we also saw him called on at home, or bringing his work 
troubles home with him.  In HBP, the night Harry arrived, Arthur 
dragged in around midnight.  That was with his new position, sure, 
but he worked long hours in the old one, too, plus had the misfortune 
of dealing with exploding toilets.

I thought the new position was more of a lateral shift as far as 
position in the department was concerned, not a promotion.  The new 
department (again, I forget the name, he dealt with those bogus 
protection charms and such instead of Muggle artifacts) was more 
important, and at the time more necessary, than his old position, so 
he probably did get a raise in salary as well.  But as head of Misuse 
of Muggle Artifacts, he would have had a higher salary than a non-
managerial drone if Rowling was referencing anything from the real 
world here, in my opinion, of course.

Ceridwen.