Originally Posted by
swaledale
I'd venture to suggest that O'Mara was not exactly a typical politician, seems to me he wasn't capable of the role in the first place which may say something about the selection process. Don't forget of course that Zahawi made a mistake in claiming for the heating of his horses stable (anther careless error)!.
To dismiss all politicians as "being the same" is I would say a very broad generalisation and I've met and had dealings with over a hundred in my life - many are actually hard working and dedicated to the role, but of course they never come up in the news, doing ones job properly is never newsworthy.
I would also say that dissing all politicians is a dangerous approach, for a start one needs to be certain what you would replace them with, a benign dictatorship sounds good, until its you thats in the firing line - there is indeed much that is imperfect with the current political system - the lack of involvement of the electorate being an obvious issue, rarely seen or heard unless they are directly affected and even then not willing to take any action, mostly accepting what happens and moaning - the French tend to be much more into direct action.
Yes looking at the way political parties are funded would be a start and banning the shady lobby groups posing as "think tanks" from any contact would be another. But on the whole politicians do reflect the society from which they are elected - it is certainly one of the Tory parties greatest achievements, to be able to be voted for by people whose interests they care little about, other than keeping the Tories in power.
By all means we should hold politicians and all those with power over others to account, as is well known, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
