In the grand scheme of things, not a lot of people know the rules MPs are subject to when it comes to using parliamentary stationery.
If you were an MP with a boatload of postage-paid envelopes, you could probably abuse them with impunity, and send them out unsolicited to 95% of your constituents without getting any redress.
But there is one group of people who are much more likely to know the rules: people who work in politics. A subset of those are councillors. And if you are really keen on getting shopped to the House authorities, who best to try it on with but councillors of an opposing party?
So, in the run up to Lib Dem Spring conference, Labour Shadow Minister John Healey wrote a letter to 295 Lib Dem council group leaders with party political content, and was duly shopped to the authorities. It was the on the issue of the Health bill – and from the same John Healey who went to the conference hoping for a massive dust-up and appeared a little surprised at the mature discussion he witnessed. He has repaid the cost of headed paper and pre-paid envelopes, and when he was slapped on the back a second time, also managed to cough up the cost of lasering the letters.
After a fair bit of ill-tempered arguing, which appears to boil down to Healey saying the rules shouldn’t apply to him because he is a front-bencher, the shadow minister was ultimately ordered to apologise to the House.
And the moral of the story? a) don’t break the rules and b) don’t break them in front of a group of people with a ready made motive to dob you in!
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7 Comments
Any link to Homicide: Life on the Street with the title?
~alec
I have that on my shelf and I have seen all the episodes of it, but it wasn’t consciously in my mind when I wrote the post. I thought the phrase had entered the public discourse, but on googling it appears to be hammers, not spanners. That makes sense, of course, because teh Leftpondians don’t have spanners, they have wrenches. Dumb as a bag of wrenches lacks a certain euphony.
Any thoughts on whether hammers are brighter than spanners?
I’m sure you didn’t mean this to be ableist, but some people are indeed unable to speak. You mean “stupid” not “dumb”. How about ” as thick as 2 short planks”?
I thought we said “mute” these days?
I’ve seen people from India described in America as “Hindustani”.
It was Nathiel Lee Mahoney aka Junior Bunk who went from a wannabe hood and dumb as a sack of hammers to the maniac who shot-up the squad room in Fallen Heroes.
As an aside, Yaphet Kotto’s character was nicknamed G not because of Giardello, but because on his first murder scene all he could see was “oh gee”. How times changed by the time [Senior] Bunk and McNulty came along!
~alec
A bag of spanners is more useful than John Healey !
This morning I received a really kind and constructive letter from John Healey after I contacted him about the issue of neo-natal deaths from meningitis.
I can, presumably, expect my show trial at Cowley Street in due course.
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