Daniel Hannen, the Telegraph and direct democracy

Looks to me like a recipe for complete disaster. Hannen has now lost my confidence after having won it for his brilliant excoriation of shabby Gordon Brown. He sums up his recipe for democracy reform in his Telegraph blog.

"Open primaries; the right of recall; a democratic upper chamber; citizen legislators; ending the patronage powers enjoyed by the Prime Minister under Crown Prerogative and making appointments through open parliamentary hearings; self-financing local councils; popular initiative; referendums."

What a mish-mash. "Your People, Sir, is a Great Beast."

Democracy and duckhouses

This email I received from a relative in UK notes some of the pettier forms of corruption among politicians:

We are having quite a lot of fun with MPs' expenses. The one that has captured the public's imagination is the purchase by a Tory MP of a rather fancy floating duck house for £1,500 at the taxpayer's expense.

They are very pretty, and if not so expensive I would like one on our roof for the two ceramic chinese ducks I bought recently from Oxfam...

Also amusing is the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer charged us £1500 in accountancy fees to do his annual tax return

These news items point to a long-standing problem with representative democracy. Should we pay our representatives? If we force them to make politics their sole trade then they no longer represent "us."
I can't see any easy way out of this.