LAST week's programme, Valleys Rebellion, where Michael Sheen followed the route of the 1839 Chartist Uprising, prompted many people to think about democracy.

Specifically, it prompted many people to think about what the chattering classes call the 'democratic deficit' - why it is that so many people no longer use the votes so hard won by the Chartists, shot down in front of Newport's Westgate Hotel.

For me, it had me thinking about a village where I once lived, Rhymney, where Sheen met local people who were obviously very, very angry with the way the Valleys have suffered over the past three decades.

Sheen ended his programme with a moving poem by Grahame Davies.

It brought back to me the words of the Rhymney writer Idris Davies, a former miner who lost fingers hacking coal from the face underground, a veteran of the 1926 General Strike, a self-educated man who later became a teacher and one of Wales' most influential poets, admired by TS Eliot.

His most famous work, The Bells of Rhymney, was set to music by US folk musician Pete Seeger and became a 1960s hit.

That sing-song treatment detracted from its underlying anger about the treatment of mining communities, and the lack of care for them by more prosperous areas.

His work, containing those verses, was called Gwalia Deserta, which translates as Wasteland Wales.

Davies wrote: "The slopes of slag and cinder Are sulking on the rain, And in derelict valleys The hope of youth is slain"

What's shocking is that 80 years after Gwalia Deserta was written, the hopelessness in villages such as Rhymney seems even worse than when Idris Davies was writing.

Sheen came to the conclusion that rather than just blank apathy, there is real anger from the public about how little their votes seem to matter, how little seems to change for the Valleys and those who are struggling in other areas.

The programme came in a week where two leading politicians, Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind, were mired in "cash-for-influence" allegations.

Here we go again - MPs bleating about how little they are paid, and bleating about how much they need second jobs. They just don't get it.

Here's what I think: if I vote for you, or if the majority of people in my constituency vote for you, and elect you, I expect you to be serving my constituency full time.

Anyone who has reams of spare time on their hands to read books and go walking needs to get themselves along to their nearest town centre and ask their constituents what they should be doing.

How can any MP be truly impartial to all but the wishes of constituents if they are also dancing to the tune of another paymaster in any role whatsoever?

And, if you fail in probity in public life and there are enough electors who think the same, we should be able to remove you from office mid-parliamentary term.

The Mother of all Parliaments used to be rather smug about how other cultures had corruption at the core of their political systems.

After the expenses scandal, I doubt anyone in Westminster would trot out those old platitudes now.

The issue really is that as well as not getting 'it', many career politicians do not get us.

So, in this new political charter I am drafting, and it's desperately-needed right now, let's have a demand which states that no one can become an MP or even an AM until they have done at least a decade of work outside the political field. Let's have more people in politics who truly get their hands dirty in jobs in our communities - let's have postmen, teachers, software engineers, carers, nurses.

Let's have people who know what it is like to live an ordinary life in this country before they reach the rarified air of Westminster or Cardiff Bay.

Now I'm sure a number of politicians will already fit that bill. I'm sure many will be good MPs and AMs who work hard for us.

But politicians can no longer bury their heads in the sand about the fact that there are so many people out there who feel they have little or nothing in common with them.

To paraphrase Morrissey, they say nothing to them about their lives.

If we want to have a democracy where people are engaged and participate willingly, politicians need to be listening to what matters to us.

They also need to be offering us something else - Idris Davies wrote: "Is there hope for the future? Cry the brown bells of Merthyr."