Despite detesting the digital age with every cell in my body, I do have a fondness for a finely-used emoji.

I’d genuinely cheer if some underground group set itself up - the Internet Liberation League, perhaps - and took out every data-centre on Earth. But I’d miss emojis. Principally because they make me laugh.

I especially enjoy a well-deployed set of emoji eyeballs as a sign of staggered disbelief - the response you might have towards anything said by Kemi Badenoch, or is it Bad-enough?

Understandably, then, I was taken by a new emoji that’s doing the rounds. You see, Scots, when discussing the brutal price hike in train fares, have been looking for a suitable emoji for "highway robbery".

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None exists, so in the make-do-and-mend spirit of the age, they’re using the Ninja emoji: a masked man clad in black wielding what could be taken for a flintlock pistol (though it’s actually a kendo stick). Good, eh?

Highway robbery, however, isn’t being committed by nationalised ScotRail. This stick-up job is the work of our dear, selfless, public-spirited government ministers.

What’s so particularly sickening about this, is that MSPs - like their Westminster pals - live pretty free on the public teat.

It’s cold out these days, so if you want to warm up, take a glance at the Scottish Parliament’s website page entitled "MSP travel and expenses". It’ll certainly make your blood boil enough to ease autumn’s chills.

There, you’ll see MSPs claiming for just about everything you can’t claim for when you go to work. When you get the train to work, do you get it paid for you? Well, MSPs do.

I looked at expenses claims for Fiona Hyslop, the Transport Secretary responsible the trains and therefore the hike in fares. There’s plenty for taxpayer-funded rail travel.

The cost of a Glasgow-Edinburgh peak return went from £16.20 to £31.40 this week. The guide to claiming taxpayer expenses says MSPs get their travel paid for “in the performance of parliamentary duties”, including “journeys between any places at which parliamentary duties are performed or between such places and a member’s residence or overnight accommodation”.

Lucky old MSPs. Accommodation: paid for. Meals: paid for.

Now, there’s a very strong argument - which indeed I’ve long supported - that in order to get the best people into parliament we must ensure they’re suitably provided for, and can live decent lives.

However, that argument crumbles - like the cheap concrete politicians allowed in schools and hospitals - when governments take decisions which hurt the rest of us, but not them.

If I decree everyone must subsist on bread and water, while eating lobster, there’s something very wrong with my moral compass.

Evidently, the SNP isn’t alone. A multimillionaire donor provided a nice quiet penthouse where Keir Starmer’s kid could study. How wonderful for young Starmer.

Yet this happens for nobody else. If our homes are crowded or noisy, our kids lump it. Nobody buys you free clothes to go to work.

Rachel Reeves decrees pensioners freeze this winter while claiming heating costs on her second home. Shameless, greedy hypocrite.

Yet even Labour are rank amateurs compared to the Tories, who used high office as a playground, as if it were Marie-Antoinette’s Petit Trianon.

If politicians took decisions - like increasing rail fares, or cutting heating allowances - such actions, even if you disagreed with the policy’s purpose, would be tolerable if politicians themselves were also affected.

If you inflict financial suffering, then endure the consequences with the rest of us. If that doesn’t happen, then you’re behaving like some aristocrat from a bygone age who tells peasants to shiver and starve while you swan around in a gilded coach - or in this case, chauffeur-driven ministerial cars.

Rachel Reeves cut the winter heating allowance while claiming heating expenses for her second homeRachel Reeves cut the winter heating allowance while claiming heating expenses for her second home (Image: House of Commons/UK Parliament/PA Wire)

Politicians shovel hot coals on to roiling public rage. Toleration of double standards will only continue so long. The harder financial times get for the rest of us, the greater the eventual political consequences.

Now, those consequences could very well be the rise of a far-right party which promises to "rain the swamp in the name of the people".

But we know where that goes: nowhere good for ordinary people, duped into voting for their own destruction through righteous resentment against establishment politicians, exploited by the false promises of extremists who care no more about the lives of citizens than those they wish to replace.

My own personal route out of this mess is for citizens to embrace the notion of sortition democracy: where ordinary people - you and I - are selected to govern. It’s basically like the jury system.

All of us can be called to serve in parliament for a year, maybe two. We make decisions about our nation, free from party politics, and with the awareness of the needs of ordinary people in our minds - because we’re ordinary people.

Sadly, though, sortition democracy is an idea whose time hasn’t yet come. One day the time will be right, as it is the fairest form of government, and the best way to protect democracy, but for now it’s fringe.

So perhaps, we could experiment with some way of teaching politicians a lesson. Why shouldn’t they be required to spend two months annually living like the poorest citizens they rule over?

Picture this: rail fares are hiked, and it’s Fiona Hyslop’s turn to live on minimum wage in a Glasgow housing scheme. For two months, she has to get to work on that damn train watching £31.40 drained daily from her account.

That might also teach politicians why sometimes work doesn’t pay. Sure, you can get a low-paid job in Edinburgh, if you live in Glasgow, but you’ll starve to death thanks to train fares - and the cost of living.

We need to enter an era in which politicians truly understand the lives of the people they govern. No matter what they say, as the system stands, they’ve no concept of what it means to live the life of an ordinary citizen.

We can continue as we are, in this political free-for-all, where those in power get everything and the vast majority of people get nothing, or we can put some damn dignity and respect back into the notion of democracy. Because this is our democracy - not theirs.

Neil Mackay is the Herald’s Writer at Large. He’s a multi-award-winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics.