Just above estate agents....

Politicians (itself nowadays a term of abuse almost) have a poor reputation, as one of them said, just above that of estate agents!

The latest dent to their reputation is, of course, the many cases where the taxpayer has been ripped off by expense claims. Their personal expenses have risen from £83 million to £93 million over the year. The vast majority ask the absolute limit for housing expenses, or within a few pounds of it.

The food is heavily subsidised, their transport costs refunded and....

The worst thing of all is that many of them feel justified in claiming everything because their salaries should be higher. It now emerges that many of them arrive on Monday from their constituencies, and are gone again by Thursday lunchtime. They are working little more than a three day week, and this year they will spend fewer days in London than for many years.

All this claiming despite the fact that many of things formerly done in London are now done in devolved assemblies, - more passengers on the gravy train, and much more is now decided by foreigners in Brussels, and merely rubber-stamped in London.

Perhaps their reputation is lowest of all, however, because they are vote-lobby-fodder, and on a government side not being to ready to challenge the government but meekly following whips, or muted in opposition through lack of opportunity to hold the government to account.

I accept that many do good work in their constituencies, fighting causes and helping individuals with problems, but the vast expenditure on what is done in London suggests that for that part at least these part-time, voting-fodder, expense-claiming so called elected representatives, are surely overpaid. The suggestion that they should be able to avoid the rip-off of expenses by transmuting these expenses into even large salaries seems something approaching an insult to those who work hard in the real world, or who have lost their jobs or homes.