Laurence Payne wrote:

An interesting point. I only know one MP personally. Looking at his
lifestyle, I think he's reasonably clean as far as expenses go. If
the next witch-hunt is about freebie jaunts around the world he might
suffer a bit :-)

I know several, and I know one of the famous "spin doctors". Words like
"clean" don't apply. Terms like "self-serving scumbags willing to lie
throught their teeth to the electorate to further their selfish aims" do
apply. The electorate should closely scrutinise their elected
representatives. At present we dont. However even the most shallow
investigation reveals things that should act as glaring great alarm
bells. For example, a typical MP is as poor as a churchmouse before
gaining office. Nowadays the most typical MPs work as parliamentary
researchers, hack journalists, local authority clerks and local
councillors before becoming MPs. All of these are low paid or unpaid
"professions".

How then do MPs manage to live in the Mercedes driving, stockbroker belt
life style on £64,000 a year? Houses in my local constituency are priced
around the hald-million pound mark, upwards. The *average* price in the
village where my MP lives is £1.1 million. Before election he really was
a no-income nobody. So how did he manage to move shortly after election
to a home in that village, complete with all the trimmings of a
lifestyle more lavish than people on salaries of £300,000 a year? Oh,
and with an expensive London home as well?

A quick perusal of his expenses in the Telegraph gives a hint.

These individuals largely learn how to guzzle at the public trough as
councillors who are supposedly volunteers but who trouser in excess of
£70,000pa in expenses.

There are a few "decent" ones around, but I suspect that the electorate
in general wouldn't like MPs like them. For example, Ms Widdecombe shows
admirable fiscal restraint as does Mike Hancock from Portsmouth South. I
can't see either of them fulfilling the electorate's desires for
representation.