Lux ex Tenebris

Civilised briefly

The Commons will metamorphose tomorrow. The angry, snarling petty inanities will fade away. A serious assembly of thinking people will voice their convictions with passion.

The party divisions will be fuzzy and secondary. Some will question Parliament’s role in seeking to ban scientific advances. Are we as trapped in prejudice and superstitions as the persecutors of Galileo? Others will voice their deeply held repugnance founded in religious traditions.

The results of the votes are certain. Parliament has progressively matured to an acceptance of scientific truths and escaped the nostrums of yesterday.

A right wing Tory Mark Pritchard e-mailed all MPs today urging a vote to reduce to 16 weeks the limit on abortions. Another Tory and Bishop’s son Robert Key blasted back: -

"I could quote the Gynaecologist I met last week who performs late abortions, or the woman with three children with whom I discussed her decision to have a late abortion. As it happens, I do have strong religious views (Christian) and one abortion is one too many for me and I want very much indeed to reduce the tragically high number of abortions in our country – over 90% of which take place in the first twelve weeks. As a Christian I do not see it as virtuous to punish or take revenge on the women who face late abortions – for that is how it looks to a great many of them. Why take it out on the women who face the most difficult decisions in the most vulnerable circumstances? As one clinician put it to me last week, “many of these women are like a train crash – everything in their lives has gone wrong at once”. Or do you think we should punish those “wicked gals” who play fast and loose with their bodies and need to be forced to have their babies come what may? Fast and loose at 20 weeks? Get real, Mark!"

Simon Jenkins in The Sunday Times said, “For the most part MPs should stop meddling in how people choose to plan and protect their families. They have enough trouble with their own”.   

Touché.

Subversive advice
An undiscovered Parliamentary joy has just been revealed to me.

The w4mp  (Working for an MP) website has some sage advice on how bag-carriers should treat their MP bosses.

Clare Romney lists five golden rules.

1. NEVER let your MP open the post. While it is every bag-carrier's dream to arrive in the office to find the impossible mountain of that day’s mail magically opened and sorted, let your boss anywhere near it and you’ll come in to find one almighty pile of woe.

Though they may be operating with the best of intentions, it will not be opened, date-stamped and subdivided into four neat piles marked ‘Urgent’, ‘Correspondence requiring a response’, ‘Invitations’, and ‘Reading material’. Neither will it be marked with helpful post-its giving additional information, with the envelopes and totally irrelevant post put in the recycling bin (the stuff like Concrete Northeast Monthly despite your boss representing a rural seat in Somerset where all the new builds are still made with wattle and daub).

Instead you will find one gargantuan mound of semi-opened mail – some with the envelopes opened but the contents missing and some opened with the contents covered in your boss's unintelligible scrawl but inexplicably put back in the envelope. On top of this all the invitations will be missing meaning that three months later you’ll still be getting anxious phone calls from local schools wanting to know why their Member of Parliament isn’t coming to prize day.

2. NEVER let your MP do any of the filing.
3. NEVER let your MP near the diary.
4. NEVER let your MP get down with the kids.
5. NEVER let your MP near your computer.

Do whatever it takes (seriously - move Heaven and Earth) to stop them hearing the word ‘blog’.

Clare’s barbs are based on the ugly truth – but only for the average MP of course. I hope she has better luck with her next boss. Much more on w4mp.