'You can't trust any of them, can you?'

The repeated appearance of Channel 4's trailer for the Dispatches programme focusing on MP's expenses now immediately has me reaching for the remote.

There is something painfully self congratulatory about the whole issue of expenses when the topic arises amongst the general population, a bubbling self righteous anger that I have come to find pretty repulsive.

As Stephen Fry said at the time the Daily Telegraph was gleefully spreading its findings over weeks worth of newsprint, there are very few of us out there who can truly say we have never tried to get the most out of our situation in regards to bonuses, benefits or bursaries.

The reality is that the general public love it because it creates a simple black and white narrative. We can label all politicians as crooks, purely in it for the expense accounts and living lavishly, whereas we are all good and pure hard-working souls.

We seem to forget that the life of a politician is not only presumably emotionally exhausting, but makes a mockery of the notion of a 9-5 job, instead spreading meetings, sittings, votes and constituent surgeries across mammoth days that would be largely unthinkable to the vast majority of us.

And what do they get for this tireless endeavour? Certainly rarely any praise. The best an MP can typically hope for is not to feature in a newspaper in any form, as the coverage will almost certainly be negative.

I appreciate that there are some politicians out there who have taken advantage of the system's faults, but we must retain a far more balanced viewpoint when it comes to addressing our representatives in parliament.

I fear that the expenses scandal is one way of showing the huge power that the media carry in forming opinion. It sickens me to hear interviews with people on the street in the build up to elections where tabloid clichés and rhetoric are incoherently regurgitated as an excuse for a real opinion and a valid reason to vote.

Perhaps there should be some form of short test before one enters the polling booth. Forget the sanctity of the secret vote, tell us 5 valid reasons for voting the way you are. If you can't give us the reasons you truly wish to vote this way, I'm afraid we will have to turn you away.

At least I wouldn't hear any more of the 'well they're all liars anyway' lines again.