Talking RABBISH
I enjoy the hullaballoo and drama in the House of Commons but they can go too far – especially Dennis Skinner
I THINK it’s about time I stepped in to deal with our current political situation.
As I understand it, conservatives are now liberals, liberals are now fascists, fascists are upset because everybody is called a fascist nowadays, nationalists are now internationalists, and, after the death of Christopher Hitchens, I am the last proper socialist left in the country. Correct?
Let me be clear, as vacuous politicians always say before clouding the issue. I have no intention of discussing ideologies, policies and so forth with you here. These are complex subjects and you can’t be expected to understand them until you put your teeth in. However, I’d like to get my teeth into the subject of political behaviour. I’m minded to witter thus after reading a letter in the Daily Express, which boasts in its masthead of being the Official Journal for Britain’s Mad People. A Somerset reader wrote that she was “disgusted”, and also “appalled”, at the behaviour of MPs at that Westminster. They bayed, she said, “like a pack of hyenas”, which the headline on her missive changed to “a pack of dogs”, betraying ignorance of the feliform carnivoran mammals of the family Hyaenidae (thanks, Wikipedia; I’ve no idea what it means but it sounds about right). Perhaps the headline writer was trying to convey the impression that flunkeys went around the House of Commons putting MPs’ poop into little black plastic bags. Although I’ve seen this several times at Westminster, I cannot pretend that it’s a widespread practice.
I am also embarrassed to say that I agree with this Somerset reader’s assessment – up to a point. I quite like all the hullaballoo and drama at the House of Commons and am not convinced that a Scandinavian-style parliament of quiet speeches reasonably made would appeal to the masses.
But they really go over the top sometimes and, while shouting is part of an MP’s job description, I don’t think it’s meant to encompass insults and abuse. Step forward veteran Labour MP Dennis Skinner, who features in a Sherlock Holmes story called The Beast Of Bolsover.
Once an interesting and amusing Bolshevik, he has become merely cranky, particularly towards the SNP members in his vicinity. You can understand his irritation. SNP MPs sit in the Hoose o’ Commons but don’t want to be there. They want to get out of one little union with a distant capital and remain in a much bigger one with a more distant capital. They deplore one Project Fear (UK) and deploy another (EU).
It’s all terribly confusing, particularly to an 86-year-old like Dennis, who remembers when there was a coal mine at the end of every street. But that was no excuse for calling Glasgow South MP Stewart McDonald, pictured above, “a piece of s**t”. Surely, if Stewart were such a thing, then a flunkey would by now have picked him and put him in a wee black plastic bag. Mr Beastie then told Her Majesty’s Press that he was only putting Mr McD “in his place”. Oh dear. That’s not the thing you say to Scottish people, many of whom tend to be sensitive about that sort of thing, though 55.3% in a 2014 poll did declare that they rather liked it. According to my researchers, the House of Commons is run by a man called Speaker Bercow and, if this is correct, it’s time for him to man up and speak to Mr Balls-Over about his loutish behaviour.
I like a bit of shouting as much as the next voter but not when it concerns toiletry issues, which should be a matter between a man and his god or doctor.
Steel cojones
SOME idiot mentioned balls earlier and, continuing the controversial political theme, I bring to your attention another instance of demeaning language deployed by people that we might otherwise love
and respect if they were not Conservatives.
I refer to Ruth Davidson, the wee bauchle who runs the Scottish Tories when she isn’t kickboxing tanks. Ms Davidson is on maternity leave after giving birth – as I understand it, to a baby – in October. However, that didn’t stop her getting off her potty to publish a tweet to the effect that Theresa May, Ruler of All Britain, had – and I quote – “cojones of steel”.
I will be quite candid with you here and confess that, when I sit down of a morning to study the ongoing political situation and keep up to date with the latest constitutional conundrums, I do not expect to read about testicles.
Apart from the biological ineptitude displayed here, that particular expression brings back horrid memories of the song that I once had sung at me to the tune of Dae ye Ken John Peel? To wit: “Dae ye ken Rab McNeil, with his balls of steel, and his kn*b of brass, and his corrugated arse?”
I forget how the rest went but suspect that it continued the theme of metallic private parts. Call me prudish, but it’s my view that these should play no part in political discourse, and I call on Ms Davidson to withdraw her testicles immediately.
Spot the difference
I WAS surprised to read that acne was still a thing.
Today’s young persons seem clearer of skin than was my generation. Probably something to do with them eating that squelchy stuff. Fruit, is it?
But people had more interesting, varied and wonky faces in the past. If you watched Peter Jackson’s recent film colouring up World War One scenes you saw many faces that would not be tolerated by the titterers in today’s world of conformist liberal authoritarianism.
Still, I read that many young persons today still get acne. One must presume they’re too scared to go out. Genetic scientists say they’ll find a cure soon, but we’re all fed up of reading that and nothing happening.
If this were the Wild West, these quacks would set up their covered wagon and say, “Behold, I have here a human genome sequencing map.” And the crowd would shout back: “Ah, shaddap!”