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Evening Standard rages over 2005 speech
Some excellent work by Andrew Collins on an Evening Standard report that a Lib Dem MP is slipping references to Shed Seven into a speech.
The Standard claims that Lewes MP Norman Baker deliberately inserted Shed Seven song titles into a speech in the Commons. Perhaps wisely, it chooses to not publish the article on its website, as it also claims that it was a "recent" speech when it actually dates back to 2005.
Baker denies doing this, calling it a coincidence - which we could accept, given how hackneyed so many Shed Seven songtitles are, it's virtually impossible to have a conversation without inadvetently throwing in a Witterism, like you're dropping cod into some sort of Ocean Pie. We could believe him, but for this last line:
On energy efficiency we are still chasing rainbows. Going for gold we are not.
That's got to be deliberate.
Naturally, rather than enjoy a little giggle at such life-enhancing silliness, the Standard rages (must be for a bet, throws doubt on his probity). The paper doesn't, though, indicate who might be hurt by the joke.
4 comments:
Personally, I think such speeches humiliate Parliament itself, and the very idea of European governance. The Lib Dems *are*, to me, the least worst of the big three, but I don't think this is any more defensible than it would be if a Cameronista had made the same speech (in which case I suspect you'd condemn it). It makes it that much harder to take seriously the LDs' supposed commitment to European social democracy.
But the Stannit has no right to condemn this, because it is wholly absorbed into the same process itself.
Apologies for the near duplicate comment but yet another example of a newspaper attempting to remove any trace of humour from British life
http://lazymediathieves.blogspot.com/2008/03/laura-roberts-of-daily-mail-walks-into.html
Newspapers just don't like jokes or good humour.
They smear their jaundiced-view on the world over the page with behaviour more akin to the Sudanese Government's attitude to teddy bears
You can't really judge the whole of the British newspaper industry on one article in the Daily Mail. Certainly the Mail don't like jokes or good humour, but other papers (alright, I basically mean the Guardian) clearly have a sense of humour.
@Robin
I suspect that had one of Cameron's front bench team made this speech, it would have warranted a post snickering at the idea of a party trying to look young and funky in 2008 by sneaking in references to Shed Seven.
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