Te Radar: Integrity? Ask the prostitute rather than the politician

These days it seems that expecting integrity from a politician is as preposterous a notion as believing that the prostitute whose services you have engaged is actually in love with you.

The pretence is present in both, but it seems today the whore is likely to be more genuine.

Being young and naive, I assume there was a time when integrity meant something.

Now it seems a lack of integrity is no more a political impediment than a set of grainy black and white photographs of an MP committing an indecent act on a Russian cultural attache on the Speaker's chair.

Political parties have so blended policy with personality that they have blinded the masses, creating in the punters' minds a hazy confusion about what they really stand for.

This confusion is surpassed only by the befuddlement of those in the parties who, I suspect, have no idea what it is they stand for.

Our parliamentarians abuse their privilege by gnawing at each other like a nest of maddened rats, feasting not on any discernable truths but on their political fellows' fallow flesh.

On a more positive front, John Banks managed to morph himself from Auckland's former mayor to Act's current nightmare. Never one to lack self-esteem, Banks ruffled Act's bedraggled feathers by suggesting he be considered as a potential candidate.

Like a dementedly determined gnome, he flailed his arms and gnashed his vowels, while showing off his own unique brand of meekness.

When he mooted the idea that he should also be placed higher on the list than some of the incumbents, I imagine the sound of Act's caucus' collective sphincters tightening would have been audible all the way to the buffet room.

Of course one can be too honest. This was evidenced by the family of the alleged New Zealand mercenary captured in Ivory Coast when they suggested he is a little mentally disturbed.

He was, you will recall, found wearing a flak-jacket and armed with only a set of rather incriminating phone numbers, and a satellite phone, on a public bus.

The truly insane part of this scenario is that in the hellhole that is the strife-torn Ivory Coast they apparently have a functioning public transport system. That we should be so lucky.

Ironically, in a fit of zealous rationalisation, Parliament is copping flak for proposing to spend $6 million installing their own cameras in the parliamentary debating chamber.

TV networks will be allowed free footage, but cannot film any themselves. This arrangement will cost a trifling $3 million a year.

Filming wide shots of Parliament's chamber during sparsely attended debates is banned, lest the public think the vacant seats mean nothing is being done. Although there is plenty being done, one has to wonder if anything is actually being achieved.