You may remember how Chief Whip Nick Brown recently castigated some of his MPs as "lazy" in a speech to journalists: "What impresses me is just how hard some Labour parliamentarians work; they wouldn't have to work quite so hard if the others worked harder."
And you may remember how he and Deputy Chief Whip Tommy McAvoy made MPs sitting on the Apprenticeships Bill sit until 4am as punishment after Dawn Butler and Sion Simon managed to lose a government clause in the bill after Butler screwed up the whipping.
Well, he wasn't taking any chances tonight, with a two-line whip as Labour sought to reinstate the deleted clauses back into the bill. Labour MPs were ordered to turn up for a series of votes from 3.30pm to 10pm.
Unfortunately, McAvoy, then failed to turn up for the start of the debate. His absence didn't go unnoticed by Tory MPs*.
Not that the hard-working Chief Whip can give him too much of a bollocking. Nick Brown clocked off before five so he could go and watch the SIX HOUR-long Lohengrin at the Royal Opera House.
Still, while Nick Brown was enjoying Wagner his "lazy" MPs were only dealing with the trivial matter of reforming child protection laws in the wake of Baby P's murder.
*"Bill Wiggin (Leominster) (Con): My hon. Friend is rightly teasing the Government for wasting the House’s time. Does he know where the Government deputy Chief Whip is — he was omnipresent in Committee, so is he ill?"
"Mr. Gibb: My hon. Friend makes a good point; the deputy Chief Whip was present throughout the later stages of our discussions. I have seen him today, looming around the Palace, so I am pleased to say that he is not ill—no doubt, he will be joining us later."
"Mr. Hayes: I am reluctant to interrupt the hon. Gentleman as I know that he takes a great interest in these matters and speaks with authority, but I thought that the House might wish to note that the deputy Chief Whip has now joined us — I presume in order to ensure that proceedings go more smoothly than they did the first time."
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
What a Goetterdaemmerung for Nick Brown
From a parliamentary correspondent...
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21 comments:
Iain, your blog overall is quite good but you are a bit partisan, I think you should have a nice long holiday and think how you should be more subjective. The blog will mature into a voice for the people and I hope you will remain up there and speak for everyone who has the good of the country at heart.
Lohengrin? Six hours? Quite a slow rendition of Lohengrin, then. Has he tried Wagner's Ring?
And anyway, I thought most Labour MPs sat in a social club with a Woodbine in one hand and a glass of stout in the other, discussing ferrets, not doing "elitist toff" things like listening to opera.
I do trust Nick Brown’s constituents don’t know he has such high falutin’ tastes.
Big boys who never grew up playing puerile tricks whilst being funded by US!
Loathsome scum, the lot of them.
Whilst Gordon and Nick Brown seem to have embraced National Socialist day over at the Bunker, Gordon decorating his house with flags and Nick listening to music MacShame got the wrong end of the stick. I expect Gordon will give him the hair dryer tonight and he will be goosestepping back into number ten tomorrow.
Still playing games. This time with children's lives.
Really vile, evil people, aren't they?
Why does it not surprise me that Nick Brown likes Wagner.
Hope he paid for his own ticket.
Do as I say etc.
You gonna do owt on Chipmunk? She can't get sacked for that.
I used to work in something called the Crime & Disorder Reduction Partnership and whilst La Chippers perhaps placed dodgy requirements on coppers & stuff, whilst they may have been inchoate strands of policy tangling each other up - there was definately a sense of some kind of leadership coming from Blears - whether wrong in my opinion for my role as I understood it - at least it was schlerotic.
As a Minister - she's got better skills than a lot of them. I very rarely agree with her but I ain't elected and she'll bloody well argue with anyone at anytime. If he wants to sack her - fine, none of my business but it'd just be another daft PR phyric victory.
PS - Wagner is pants unless you're absolutely hammered.
Iain
You might be surprised at how little the man in the street, even the Tory man, cares about such fiddle-faddle.
The minutiae of Parliamentary proceedings do not strike a chord with me. It is like discussing how good or bad a meal was based only on the table setting.
Lohengrin? That would be the one about Count Talmarund, the evil henchman to King Henry the Fouler, who tries to get Queen Elsa sacked by spreading ill-founded rumours about her.
Lohengrin is the brave knight who slays the evil henchman and becomes king.
So Nick Brown has a second job watching opera, has he?
Can we expect him to declare it and how log he watches it and how much of his salary he will remit when he watches it on Parliamentary time?
And if Mr Anonymous (12.53) thinks you are too partisan, he can always spend his twilight hours reading Labourlist. For me you can carry on exposing Labour hypocrisy.
Did he pay for the tickets?
Did he take a tax payer funded taxi to the theatre?
Just another example of the wretched apparatchiks who pollute public life!
Isn't it useful for apparatchiks to confront themselves with High Art once in a while?
It must be much harder to do evil after attending Lohengrin or reading Proust, for example.
Coming back to their respective Parliamentary abilities, this lot simply couldnt organise a piss up in a brewery.
As for Wagner,very well thought of by the Nazi`s you know and after yesterdays posing with the swastikas, well makes you think donnit...
"Nick Brown clocked off before five so he could go and watch the SIX HOUR-long Lohengrin at the Royal Opera House."
Lucky bastard. Mind you, if there is a composer worth losing your job over it's Wagner.
Is it Starkey's question time appearance which has brought on the deluge of references to Gotterdammerung in the last few weeks? Bandwagonning?
On the subject of operas that last three or four days. Can anybody confirm that the Germans do not have a word for fluffy?
One told me once that there is no German word for "embarrassment" - which figures.
Wrinkled Weasel, the Germans have more words for fluffy than we do. The largest Collins dictionary gives:
(wool, slippers, sweater, towel) flauschig
(kitten, rabbit) flaumweich
a fluffy dog, ein wolliger Hund
fluffy clouds, Schäfchenwolken
fluffy toy, Kuscheltier
(omelette) locker
whip the eggs till fluffy, die Eier schaumig schlagen
And the German for embarrasment is Verlegenheit.
With all due and not without fear of being pedantic, Lohengrin production at ROH is 4 delicious hours 45 mins long. I hope Nick Brown thoroughly enjoyed it, I know I did.
Thankyou Tachybaptus. I shall cut and paste your answers and try them on my good friend Lotte Von Madhaus.
Wagner puns on your blog? Proof that everything possible in the universe can and will happen eventually.
Now go and say 10 Mamma Mias, 7 Our Fathers and 2 Living Dolls.
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