If you haven't already, you must hear this one, from Anthony Steen MP (that's Member of Parliament for short, but not for long, ha ha - HAH!) for Totnes, Devon (Con):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8062205.stm
He was quoted verbatim, with incisive cruelty, by Dimbleby on tonight's wonderful, possibly constitution-changing, Question Time; and I sensed a shift, or perhaps focus, in the mood of the panellists and the audience as we heard those words, and the insufferable arrogance they welled up from. (I gather he's since apologised, and is of course standing down at the next election - like, not now? - so that's OK then.)
As an aside (asides often interest me much more than the main road) I am intrigued as to how Totnes, a town I'd always pictured as one of the country's convergences of matted-hair bead-weaving alternative new age ley-lines, came to get this Tory landlord as their MP. Weird, man.
I once visited an artist in Totnes who made, and tried to sell, miniature sculptures constructed from the fluff you get out from the filter of the tumbledryer, an idea I'd have liked even better had it been suffused with even the merest hint of irony. Actually, now I remember, that was in St David's not Totnes. But hey, same difference.
Ah but Totnes is a beaded jewell in the Ocean of Ostentatia (aka the South Hams in which we also have the Thurlestone Golf Club & similar huff-puff havens; also a vast swelling in the number of shiny Chelsea tractors on the lanes during glorious weekends such as we have just experienced).
ReplyDeleteI am sorry to say the man, though not through my cross, is (soon to be was), our local Member.
This is the man who parked at Totnes railway station for several days in a disabled parking bay (he is not disabled, at least not in the sense that would have permitted him legitimately so to do) on the basis that there were far too many disabled parking spaces across the UK & he was far too busy & important to have to hunt around for a parking space. He was described as a "pompous oaf" by a representative of a disabled transport group; the Conservative Party had "distanced itself" from Steen's comments.
But he did announce that he would not be claiming the cost of his parking fine on expenses.
So that's alright then.