The more the press pursue the issue of MP's expenses the angrier I get. At the MPs? No, at a media has finally exhausted my patience.

Stephen Fry has gone on record to say that MP's being criticised by journalists for being venal is laughable and I would tend to agree. This is the ultimate case of pots calling the kettle black.

Think about it... actually think, have you met your MP? I have and I have rarely met a more hard working, modest, and well-intentioned bloke in my life. I had complained to him about a NHS issue and he took the time to meet me, speak to my doctors and intervene in the case. He votes sensibly in parliament and scuttles backwards and forwards between my hometown and London. He does the right thing. He gets an above average wage, but it's by no means excessively high (compared to, ooh, let's think about, oh yeah, bankers, footballers, barristers/ solicitors, GP's, dah-di-dah) and he has to maintain two homes with it. I assume he will be making allowance claims but let's face it, how could he do his job otherwise, have you seen the rents and house prices in London?

Most of our MP's are decent people, if the system allows them to top up their income they will do so and most will stay within the bounds of reason. Some will not. I can say this with some confidence because MP's are people and most people behave well, some do not.

If we start thinking of our MP's are largely untrustworthy people, our democracy won't work, because we will opt out and stop voting, or start voting for the wrong reasons. Our government is not corrupt - it is considered to be one of the most open in the world - take a look at Italy? It's run by a millionaire media mogul who owns most of the TV and newspapers and has a shady financial past (possibly related to the Mafia). His media outlets do not allow criticisms of Silvio so all the gaffs and idiocies that we are all too aware of, are passing the Italians by. TheUnited States is largely run by lobbyists in the pay of big business (as poor old Barack is rapidly discovering) and Spain was disfigured by a culture of brown envelopes - the current socialist government is desperately trying to undo the damage caused to their country by years of corruption.

We have become cynical about our MPs and this is not healthy. Let me be clear, I am not saying that we should become as meek and accepting as lambs, we should have a little healthy scepticism about anything we are told, and we should always make use of our critical faculties. But that is rather different from assuming that everything that our government and it's representatives say and do is bad, and that they all have their noses in the trough. If MP's wanted to get rich they wouldn't be MP's, they would have worked at Lloyds Bank.

If you watch "The thick of It" or " In the loop" by all means have a laugh, Chris Langham and Armando Iannucci are very funny writers - but they are not MP's with a special insight into government, they are comic writers .....cynical comic writers. Journalists are men and women after a story - they are not people campaigning to save you... the story and their living is their primary interest. if some good occasionally comes out of it, well and good, but if lots of bad stuff happens, well, shit, it's not their fault.

We are sleepwalking to another potentially disastrous Tory government in this country because we have become a nation of idiots: we believe the press, we watch crap "reality" TV, we want 'change'. Actually we don't want change - we have a country led by a group of people who usually have the majorities best interests at heart (honestly they do, they've just been distracted by money markets - look at your parks, schools and hospitals and try and remember what Thatcher did to them). Cameron and his shadow cabinet are old school Tories and when in power they will ensure that people like themselves will prosper and devil take the hindmost. By the way, that's you!

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