The national gnashing of teeth that took place last week over a fourteen stone eight year old was as predictable as it was entertaining. Not that I find the boy’s circumstances funny; merely the reactions to them.

Amid the thinly veiled snobbery that’s always given an airing on occasions like this – well, those working class people are a bit think aren’t they?

Lord knows that healthy eating isn’t exactly rocket science – was a fascinating dichotomy. When debates about “responsibility” are under way in the national media there are certain groups within society that think that such terms apply to the likes of the eight year old kid and his mother, but not to them. We’re middle class, you know; our penne is ethically sourced and we keep our front porches clean. We don’t have responsibilities.

Well, actually, you do. As I approach my nine hundredth year of working as a bag-carrier to a Member of Parliament it never ceases to amaze me the casually contemptuous attitude that many people hold - not only politicians but representative democracy as a whole.

You only need to look at the letters page of the Daily Mail or the trendy lefty frothings on Comment is Free to read a depressingly familiar mirror-image of what a large number of MPs receive in their post bags everyday. “We never see you around here,” they write to say to their unfortunate Member, who probably hasn’t seen his or her family all weekend because they've been holding surgery after surgery. “I’ve voted for the [insert] Party all my life, but you have betrayed us over [insert issue]. Either you sort it out or you lose my vote”.

This, often, is the sole contribution that many people have with the political system: the exercising of their “rights”. The constant demands become rather wearing at times, especially when the only recommendation MPs read of themselves is the lazy-politicians-snouts-in-the-trough-what-have-they-done-for-me-lately analysis so beloved of people who see the state as a kind of sweet shop to which they are entitled to unlimited credit.

There’s rarely any sense that democracy is a reciprocal relationship where they have a duty to act as citizens rather than consumers, to hold their elected representatives to account. Not in the lazy way of the Question Time audience (and occasionally celebrity panel members) that dismisses all politicians as “liars” or, more recently “numpties”. It gets an approving round of applause, but it’s a hollow, meaningless response to a supposed deeper hunger amongst the electorate: the desire to be engaged.

As various middle-class nutritionists and self-appointed experts were so keen to tell us last week, healthy satisfaction is consequent upon a little work and preparation. A healthy democracy is just the same; it requires getting involved with your local community, taking an active part in the local school through the PTA, trying to understand the issues and conflicting views and pressures on the various actors, be they politicians, parents, residents, or teachers. Occasionally it means recognising that your individual good might not be the same as the common good, and that when politicians don’t do precisely as you want – which is pretty impossible when each constituency contains up to 72,000 voters all with a different idea as to what the best solution is – it’s democracy, not betrayal.

That’s not to say that politicians get it right all the time but when that happens, screaming at them harpy-like and then disengaging completely in a sulk is not the answer. The free market theory of democracy holds that we get the politicians we deserve and, as many loftily informed the unfortunate eight-year old’s parents, the battle to ensure that our system works well is what we grown ups like to call “personal responsibility”.

The popular model of society shouldn’t be “them” and “us”, and in an era when politicians are more desperate than ever before to actually get involved in communities and affect social change, to accuse them of perpetrating this perceived separateness speaks of the kind of laziness that blames McDonalds for our bulging waistlines. Yes, it is easy, damned tasty, and ultimately empty calories but you have a choice to eat it or not. And if you do, screaming at the manager of your local fast food chain that it’s not your fault you’re a lardy git is only going to generate limited sympathy.

So we should all stop cramming our faces with burgers and quick-fixes, whilst blaming somebody else for our obesity, whether that obesity is physical or metaphorical. Viewing the service politicians provide as a “right” whilst failing to engage in the “responsibility” of being an active citizen and participant in the state does not make for good democracy and blaming your lazy so-called disillusionment on somebody else smacks of the kind of lack of responsibility we were all so keen to mock in the mother of the unfortunate eight year old boy. Lord knows, it’s not exactly rocket science.