I DON'T wish to keep harping on about President Bill Clinton and his sordid sex life but the seemingly ignorant American Republicans baying for his blood need reminding of a couple of obvious home truths.

Clinton may or may not have lied on oath, depending on his highly personal, rather idiosyncratic interpretation of the phrase 'sexual relations' - although for my own part I would not have included activities with tobacco products within the

definition.

One does hope she didn't inhale.

But to accuse a politician of telling lies is

somewhat like accusing a fishmonger of selling fish.

An honourable and honest individual in political circles is about as rare as a week going by

without the odious Richard Branson sticking his face - or even more offensive parts of his anatomy - in our national newspapers or TV screens.

And if the most powerful man in the world

cannot enjoy the odd perk now and again, what's the point of running for President in the first place?

In a democratic country, politicians have to promise to carry out contradictory policies in order to win the votes of conflicting interest groups.

They know they won't be able to carry out these policies once in office but they make the promises anyway, knowing full well what they say is not true.

Of course this system is encouraged by interests groups in society who have no other political agenda than what they personally desire to

happen, usually their own economic

improvement, without reference to the rest of society.

One group much in the spotlight at the moment are the pig farmers.

Because the industry is not thriving they want pig meat imports banned.

Obviously this would mean the price of bacon going up for the rest of us, but pig farmers don't care about that - they want to make more money than they are doing at the moment.

Personally, I would like to see the price of pig meat going down rather than up because I have to pay for it from my wages.

To personalise the issue to what might seem a ridiculous degree, but it might get to the nub of the problem - British pig farmers want more of my money going into their bank account.

So instead of bleating about the usual claptrap of countryside, traditional industries, cheap imports undermining 'British' products ad nauseum, why don't they just come round to my house and ask me for a fiver?

Obviously they know I would tell them to begger off, so they want the Government and big

supermarket chains to change the rules so people like me, and many millions like me who are not pig farmers, are forced to put more money in the bank accounts of pig farmers instead of leaving it in ours or spending it on something other than pork.

If we were in the run up to a General Election politicians would be falling all over themselves to promise protesting pig farmers that they would be made a special case at the same time as promising consumers that bacon prices would not rocket if they were elected.

Such promises directly contradict one another but in the grey world of political non-integrity such glib dishonesty abounds.

As an electorate we are forced to vote, not for the people whom we think will do the best for us and society as a whole, but - particularly in the last election - to get rid of the sleazy lot who have been in power for the last few years.

In the political arena of narrow self-interest the collective good is abandoned, resulting in a sharp decline in social morality and a general rise in greed, dishonesty, selfishness and anti-social behaviour.

At the apex of this festering social pyramid sits the political leadership we deserve.

Expecting anything virtuous of them is to display an astonishing level of imbecility.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.