Politics can be a notoriously mucky business, what with all the smears and dirty tricks. One woman has taken it upon herself to clean up the German government after seven years in the sometimes murky world of the Bundestag. But this is not the usual purging of blots on the political landscape. Lilo Friedrich is fighting the dirt not with new legislation or the power of a select committee -- but with a broom and a feather duster.

After losing her seat in the German parliament in the last general election, the former Social Democratic lawmaker found herself with time to consider her career prospects as a 57-year-old ex-politician. Seven months after her departure from the cut and thrust of the Bundestag, she's back. But this time she's armed with furniture polish and floor cleaner. Lilo Friedrich is now a cleaning lady.

"I wrote letters of application until my fingers hurt," she said. "Everywhere in the vicinity of 100 kilometers (62 miles). The response was catastrophic. Either I was over-qualified, the job was not a permanent post or I was just too old."

She first tried to get a job working with the old as a career but with little success. She even went back to her long-forgotten trade as a seamstress in the fashion trade but all to no avail.

"One interviewer said that I was the sort of person he would go to the theater with or go on holiday with but not someone who he would want working in his store," he said. "I would be too self-confident for him. He said that he would prefer a 20-year old who he could mould."

You can't keep a good woman down

Not one to sit on her behind and be bored, not at home anyway -- years at the Bundestag had probably made her immune to tedium and numb bottoms in a work situation -- Friedrich decided to start her own business doing something "a little closer to home."

After bringing up six children and keeping housework as her hobby even during her political career, Friedrich made a plan to make her pastime her new occupation.

Cleaning for those who cannot look after themselves is a pleasure and a job with a social conscience, she said. Most old or infirm people know the consequences of employing unregistered help and Friedrich offers her services at special rates and under license from the city hall in Düsseldorf.

The irony of her vote in favor of the Hartz IV reforms, which puts financial restrictions on the unemployed and adds strain to the already over-burdened job market, is not lost on Friedrich. And she said she is still an advocate.

"Those who want to work will get work," she said. "But right now, it is not always like that. I agreed with Hartz IV when I was a politician and whether that was good or bad, I don't want to discuss that now."

An example to female workers everywhere

She does however want to talk about her new fame as the ex-politician-turned-cleaning lady. Media requests are piling up and Friedrich is happy to talk about her new profession, one which her former colleagues would consider to be "undignified" for a former member of the Bundestag.

Friedrich is proud of her new job and what she has done to achieve it and said that it is a positive message to all those women over 50 who have come up against the same stonewall treatment as she has and think they are on the employment scrapheap.

"These women are really disadvantaged," she said. "I have had quite a few letters and phone calls from women who have had similar experiences, that nobody wanted them. I would like to say that we can show courage and not sit at home feeling sorry for ourselves but to get out there again. There are very many things in life for us."

It sounds like Lilo Friedrich's campaigning days are far from over and that those politicians who would look to keep the workers down had better beware.