Politics is not for sissies. It's bad enough in the corridors of sour where they've slugged it out, shout abuse at each other day in and day out and generally behave pretty badly.

Perhaps they're setting an example, although that's not entirely fair. Politics by its very nature is a confrontational, abusive business and that's not all that surprising, given most issues are approached from a totally different point of view depending on what side of the political spectrum you sit.

But it's not what goes on inside Parliament that's charged the academics from Otago University who've carried out a survey of more than a hundred MPs and have not surprisingly found that 87% of them have experienced harassment, both physical and verbal.

There are the examples we all see every year at Waitangi Day, the mud being slung at the dishevelled Don Brash, Teflon John Key being roughed up with his broken arm and Helen Clark even once being reduced to tears by the rabble rousing Titiwhai Harawira whose since worked her way into an escort's role for politicians on to the marae.

Security around Parliament's now as tight as a drum, you even need a swipe card to get out of the place these days. Once upon a time nutters could roam around the place at will, like the time when one of the bewildered wandered in waving a fake pistol around looking for Big Dave Lange.

But politicians are expected to advertise their wares out in their electorates, meeting constituents on demand, opening their doors to the dispossessed. So they're vulnerable, where they live isn't difficult to establish as Fran Wilde discovered when she was promoting homosexual law reform in the 1980s and was subjected to some of the worse abuse, culminating in a box of faeces being sent to her through the mail.

So that's the ugly, more obvious side of being one of the public's representatives in this place.

It's the insidious use of the social media that's become the weapon of mass corruption though. The cyber highway's become the sewer byway for many, issuing all sort of threats with little fear of discovery.

The trolls and bottom feeders are having a ball, waging war with their keyboards against the politicians, and in fact anyone else who deals in the business.

The delete key gives them all the attention they deserve!