Just how corrupt are our MPs?

The following email is still doing the rounds:

  *Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than  600
> employees and has the following employee statistics .** **
>
> 29 have been accused of spouse abuse
>
> 7 have been arrested for fraud
>
> 9 have been accused of writing bad cheques
>
> 17 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
>
> 3 have done time for assault
>
> 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
>
> 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
>
> 8 have been arrested for shoplifting *
> *
> **21 are currently defendants in lawsuits** **
>
> 84 have been arrested for drink driving in the last year
>
> Which** **organisation is this ?** **
>
> It's the 635 members of the House of Commons, the same group that cranks
> out
> hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us inline.
>
> What a bunch of bastards we have running our country - it says it all. And
> just to top all that they probably have the best 'corporate' pension scheme
> in the country!! **

It is a lie.  The Guardian in 2006 says:
It originated in 1999 in the US, on a libertarian website called Capitol Hill Blue
- the giveaway is the "little over 500", the size of the US House and
Senate combined - and similar variants have previously been found in
Canada and India. The claims weren't true in the US and they are certainly not true in the UK. 

The fact that it is still doing the rounds is a symptom of how low MPs and politicians have fallen in public opinion.

On the one hand Government does deserve to be viewed like this, because of their dissociation from reality (two examples spring to mind: GBs repeated assertions that we are leading the world in climate change, while he is doing the opposite; and Lord Malloch Brown's assertion that the UK's performance in Afghanistan is "successful".)

On the other hand, MPs embody the principle of democracy, and that is a principle which is beyond value.  Governments may reveal varying levels of crapness, but just look at Somalia if you want to do away with government, or Zimbabwe if you doubt the usefulness of fair(ish) elections.

The sad thing is that many of the people who take the email at face value will go ahead and read the schmedia, and will go ahead and vote for the grey parties, or worse still, abstain from voting or vote BNP.  The logical thing to do if you are critical of Government is to vote for the Green Party, whose ideology is firmly based on physical, biological and human reality.