IT’S NOT the fact that Lord Sewel was a member of parliament, sitting in the House of Lords with the power to make laws governing the rest of us.

It’s not that he was chairman of a committee that pontificates on the conduct of peers, even though he’s now being investigated for possibly breaking the law himself. It’s not that he was filmed allegedly snorting a ‘substance’ that resembled cocaine. Or that one of the surfaces the alleged substance was on were the breasts of a prostitute. Or the fact that he was pictured in an orange bra. Or that he was married when he did all this.

It’s not even the bit where one of the sex workers sounds surprised that he gets £200 a day expenses and he replies: “I know, it sounds incredible,” before telling her that: “It’s paying for this.”

No. The bit that made my head start spinning round like that bird in The Exorcist is that we have people like Lord Sewel in the first place; unelected, unable to be got rid of, and, in many cases, only there because they gave a political party a few hundred grand.

We have 783 unelected peers, the vast majority of whom are entitled to coin £300 a day in expenses. Just for turning up. David Cameron wants to appoint ANOTHER 40.

That’s another 40 rich, time-serving coffin-dodgers (remember, there are more peers aged over 90 than under 40) parading around in dead animals (and in Lord Sewel’s case, a bra), making the laws that affect all of us without one, single vote being cast to elect them.

In what way is that not wrong on every level?

But if anyone complains that it’s all a bit North Korea we’re told not to worry our little heads about it, like we’re told that not having a written constitution is somehow a Good Thing, or a British Bill of Rights. The standard deflecting practice is to flag up utterly admirable peers like Doreen Lawrence, mother of the murdered teenager, Stephen, but that’s not the point. We should be able to vote for people like her. And vote them out if we don’t like them.

I was asked on Twitter recently, in a debate about MPs' pay, if I thought that ‘ordinary people’ could scrutinise legislation, the idea being, presumably, that they can’t. Even though our greatest institution, the NHS, and our foreign policy during World War II were respectively set up by a coal miner and overseen by a milkman.

If Lord Sewel is anything to go by I’d love to know what those who think that ordinary people can’t do this kind of job believe they’re getting for their money. Because it’s not good governance, is it?

Labour afraid of its own supporters 

HOW DARE Labour leadership candidate Andy Burnham claim Labour is ‘afraid of its own shadow’? Labour’s biggest trouble is that it’s afraid of - and in some cases would appear to utterly despise - its own supporters.

Why else would they refuse to properly discuss issues such as our toxic membership of Europe and concerns over immigration?

It doesn’t matter now whether they dig up Clement Attlee and get him to run the party again - they are going nowhere until they face up to the fact that Britain’s changed and too many of their supporters feel they have not changed with it.

Walter Palmer in a minority 

THE POINTLESS, pitiless slaughter of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe proves many things, and most of them are profoundly depressing.

But the universal loathing and opprobrium heaped on oxygen-stealers like Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who snuffed out Cecil for a few minutes’ brutal entertainment, shows that scum like this really are in a disgusting, pathetic, hated minority.

And hopefully now they know it.

Have we really put up with Jeremy Kyle for 10 years?

NEVER mind the bad teeth, the nutters and the floozies, the DNA disasters and the cheating - always the cheating. The thing I can’t get over about the Jeremy Kyle show is that it’s only been around for 10 years. Surely we’ve had to put up with this smug-faced loon-botherer for much longer than that?

Fashion and diets go hand in hand 

WHY are shop dummies so thin, a disgruntled customer asked Top Shop this week. There’s a simple reason why mannequins look the way they do. And that’s because clothing tends to look better on people who are the same circumference as Cheryl Fernandez-Versini’s leg. Which is why we have such a vibrant diet industry.

Note: This piece by Faith is an opinion piece and not a news report. You can contact Faith by tweeting @HerFaithness