British despise their politicians

After the expenses scandal in the UK voters feel nothing but contempt for their politicians, the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes: "It's difficult to find something to compare with the momentous dimensions of the expenses scandal in the British lower house of parliament, simply because the greed motive seems so out of place there. True, the Profumo affair ended an era of British parliamentarianism with similar force back in the 1960s … . But the forbidden fruits with which a call girl drove crazy the defence minister at the time [John Profumo] who gave the scandal its name were familiar temptations in political life. But that hundreds of MPs from all the established parties would use their mandate to carry on a family business with nepotistic traits, with dozens of them trying to squeeze the lower house's expenses system for every last penny has profoundly shocked the British public. The voters have wasted little time on boredom with continental politics and gone straight on to an angry contempt for their politicians."

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