We could be lifted by honesty . . .

If you are prepared to broaden your mind a little, it’s amazing what you can learn, even at my age. Whilst desperately searching websites for an affordable half term break last week, that didn’t involve me selling a kidney, I discovered that you can visit Center Parcs in the Netherlands for a third of the price of an identical break here in the UK.

This moment of financial enlightenment then introduced me to the joys of Kroketten (a sort of croquette that appears to be very bad for you), inland waterways, interlinked with a myriad of bridges and tunnels and an ordered, polite society that would never introduce a Tampon tax.

I also now know that Bruges is not just for hit men on a holiday – I like it, a lot and I have never killed anybody.

Unfortunately the televi- sion in the lowlands of Europe leaves a lot to be desired and my inability to fathom out the remote led to me missing out on the live skewering of Peterborough MP, Stewart Jackson, by Jon Snow on Channel 4.

Poor old Stewart should have taken a leaf out of the book of his fellow Tory MP, James Cleverly (pictured) and disarmed old Jon boy with a bit of brutal honesty.

The newly elected MP for Braintree has taken candour to the next level by freely admitting, in an interview with Five Live, to taking drugs in his twenties and watching porn – Basically behaving like a teenager.

Hurrah, how refreshing, straight answers to straight questions and a politician who appears to have lived and who is not afraid to tell us what he really thinks.

Now imagine how different the interview with Mr Snow would have been had Stewart employed that simple Cleverly technique:

Snow - “Given that 76 per cent of all the kids in your constituency are affected by these cuts to tax credits, what representations have you made to the Chancellor about how damaging they are going to be for them?”

Jackson: “I have told him very clearly on numerous occasions that he needs to look at this again, otherwise I will stick his red box where the sun doesn’t shine and give him a centre parting.”

The interview would have been over quicker than it takes a five year old to steal your bank details from a seemingly secure website.

But I think we could take this honesty thing a lot further when it comes to people in public office, or positions of authority that are paid for by our hard earned cash.

Perhaps we should have a mandatory list of twenty questions, enshrined in law that each candidate must answer in full before applying for these posts.

To ensure that they answer truthfully we could use Jeremy Kyle’s lie detector test or borrow some electrodes from the Americans, who apparently have a few going spare in Guantanamo these days.

We would know exactly who we were voting for at a general election and what sort of person was hoping to run our police force in Cambridgeshire.

Just think of what we could learn if we get the questions right:

What is the worst thing you have ever lied about? Are you just in it for the money? Do you like the Lighthouse Family?

Maybe three questions would be enough.