It astonishes me that anyone other than politicians would wish to associate with politicians.

They’re an abysmal subsection of society. The politician, as a genus, detests any notion of scrutiny and accountability, whilst suffering from an acute and incurable addiction to adulation and power. Their preferred modus operandi is obfuscation, lies and division.

If you were feeling somewhat unaccommodating, you could interpret those attributes as fashioning the dreaded conglomeration of character traits known as the dark triad: Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy.

Was there ever a way of living, a style of being, more thoroughly designed to grate and offend the average citizen than that of the politician?

Politicians have, throughout my life, smashed society to smithereens, driven down our living conditions, and in the course of their destruction found fame and fortune.

Yet who is worse? Us or them? We let them behave like this, evidently. Perhaps voters have some sado-masochistic need to be walked over?

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It is the avoidance of accountability which most offends. The media at Holyrood is now being penned like a herd of animals to keep journalists from questioning MSPs.

Reporters are forbidden from approaching politicians and asking questions about how they’re spending our money and what they’re doing with the powers we gave them.

Journalists must remain in a designated corral. Politicians can waft by like debutantes on their way to a royal ball, and only........

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