Nutloose,
If you take a cross section of 600+ members of the public, you will almost certainly get a proportion of rogues, scoundrels and downright thiefs. In that way parliament is no different from society in general. The MPs fiddling their expenses (and I fully admit there were a lot of them) made the headlines - the ones only making genuine claims were barely mentioned in the media frenzy.
Power corrupts, and many MPs have been in parliament far too long, which leads to complacency and arrogance. Analysis of small elitist military units, especially ones where people have been serving for considerable periods of time, often shows they need a good shake up and injection of new blood and ideas. Maybe nobody should be allowed to be an MP formore than 10, 15, 20 years - pick a number.
The publics perception of MPs has been pretty low for many years now, the expenses scandal just confirmed it. They haven't been role models for many years.
The youth of today have few decent role models left, and over many recent years the press seem to have taken great delight in systematically attacking and dragging down (in some cases rightly) what few role models were left - including the UK military.
The youth of today seem to aspire to being a celebrity, such as a TV presenter, film star, singer or highly paid sportsman, rather than a doctor, astronaut, train driver, etc, etc,....
By the way, I'm not an MP, none of my relatives are MPs, neither do I particularly like or respect MPs......