Politics and Education

Who can it be? A group of bitter bankers? Oligarchs from afar? UKIP?
All this stuff about MPs and their greedy troughings must have been floating around for years. Who decided to pay for the 'security expert' to tout it around to the Tory press just at the point that the recession started to bite?
Someone is trying to destabilise democracy in Britain and let the nasties in, to put people off voting so only those with extreme views get into powerful positions.
First Thatcher and then Blair made the position of Prime Minister undemocratically powerful. I know this from the horse's mouth because I used to have a job that involved taking politicians from emerging democracies round the House of Commons.
The MPs and councillors I took round were horrified by the House of Lords and baffled by the tradition of Black Rod; they were impressed by the debate in the House of Commons and the fact that you are allowed to go and watch. They were an intriguing lot: one, from Serbia I think, had rather a lot of other financial agendas going on. The guy from Croatia was a radiologist who had not been allowed to practice under Communist rule and wanted to visit a doctor he admired in Hammersmith. The Hungarian took off his Communist Party badge on the plane in case people gave him flak.
It was very interesting. I learned that people enter politics for a lot of different reasons; we should not say 'they're all the same'.
It is a very difficult job, almost impossible to get through with any grace and self-respect. I imagine it to be similar to teaching, where there are constant extremes of aggression and gratitude, and a set of rules that mean that you have very strong guidance about what to do and what not to do, while at the same time knowing that your personality and individuality of style will make a huge difference to the quality of work that you do.
The bottom line is that these jobs are about public service; you are paid by society and trusted to develop and use a particular sort of expertise to benefit the people who pay you to be there.
The pay is not good, and the stress is endless, but you are a small part of a very interesting machine!