I pay my plumber to service my boiler, install new taps and fix leaks. He's not perfect; he's been banned from driving for repeated excessive speeding offences. He managed to flood my kitchen once last year, but he's an excellent chap who makes mistakes and I'll keep him coming. The man who sweeps my chimneys and who maintains my stoves was fined £600 for driving without insurance. He managed to breach a certain building regulation once when he signed off the new wood-burning stove he'd installed for us, but it was a misunderstanding of the regs and there's no hazard or problem that can't be easily fixed if I ever sell the house. I'll be booking him again in the next few weeks. I don't care for my Tory MP at all but I accept the democratic process that elected him. I don't actually see him at his multifaceted work but I'm reasonably confident that he's fairly dutiful, even though he consistently supports policies that I disagree with. The thing is, he got elected to decide on those policies whereas I wasn't. He's far from perfect and I wouldn't expect him to be. Many MPs have been known to stretch points on their expenses forms and a few need to grow up sexually, and it would be nice if they put public interest above watching their backs. Same with some bank managers, doctors, professors, vicars and headteachers and a lot of others who we should feel are worthy of respect but who are somewhat less in the public eye than politicians. Thing is, we get the politicians we deserve. But suggest political education in schools and all of a sudden, according to Tories, every teacher becomes a potential red under the bed. So we have an electorate who are politically ignorant unless they educate themselves as best they can (given the generally warped and skewed resources at their disposal), and that is a small minority (have you asked those random boozers yet what a customs union is?) If every MP was as bloody useless as some suggest, we wouldn't have a country. They have a job to do, and the most that any of us see of it is their pronouncements on the telly. The tip of the iceberg.