The Greasy Pole Politics they say is a greasy pole.
Pay is low, preferment dicey.
When you're not climbing through grease, you're wading through mud. The historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto examines political ambition, asking whether it's an honourable calling, or a mad career, a stairway for saints, or a ladder for snakes. In politics, the struggle's pretty tough, but the profession's still overcrowded. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto Research for the Hansard society found that MPs claim to work an average 70 hour week. Many complain of the frustrations of life under the party whips and few reach positions of real power or influence.