Martha Kearney's week

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By Martha Kearney Presenter, BBC Radio 4's World at One

"Politicians are in it for themselves. They just take your money, they're all corrupt".

Afghan police mount patrols in Kunduz

You are probably used to voters bemoaning the political system but those voices weren't from Middle England rather from Central Kabul where I was visiting last week for a series of programmes to coincide with the London conference.

Some of the worst abuses take place at police checkpoints.

As the snow began to fall, I went to the gate in the north of the city, a bottleneck where trucks and cars enter Kabul from Mazar e Sharif and Kunduz.

Inside an office where people waited for shared taxis heated by a wood stove, they spoke of threats from police with guns, the harassment from officials in every part of their lives.

The story was just the same in the shops on Chicken Street where traders have sold jewellery, leather and glass from Herat to tourists ever since the first hippies came to Kabul in the sixties. Not that there were any tourists in evidence last week.

The systemic corruption undermines trust in the state itself and makes the coalition's task of leaving behind a robust political system more difficult.

The scale of the problem in Afghanistan of course totally dwarves the issue of MPs' expenses in Britain but there is a common element which is public anger at their leaders.

The degree is vastly different but we will still see an impact on our political life especially in the coming election.

Tony Wright, the Labour chair of the Commons Public Administration Committee told me he expected voters to vent their anger on sitting MPs who have had problems with expenses.

That, combined with the large numbers of MPs who have decided to stand down, will mean the next Parliament could have an unprecedented number of new members.

It will be interesting to see if they shake up the old place or like so many new MPs before them, will they become seduced by the archaic customs and traditions so rigorously enforced by the "men in tights"?