Skiving MPs take on New York, SNP’s latest woes, Westminster in the dog house
Showbusiness for ugly people…
Many moons ago, Sir Arbuthnot heard a cracking tale from the Women and Equality committee’s March trip to New York, for the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
The trip, as advertised on the committee’s website, was ostensibly to “highlight the deterioration of women and girls’ access to contraception and timely, accurate and safe abortion advice and services across the world as ‘of particular concern’”.
Unfortunately, it sounds like the official agenda failed to hold the attention of some MPs on the trip.
At the time one MP got a tip-off, then passed on to Beachcomber, that some of the group had received a serious bollocking for slipping away from scheduled taxpayer-funded meetings in order to go and enjoy the bright lights of Broadway.
Three MPs – all hard-left socialists – reportedly skipped a meeting with the ambassador on Tuesday, March 7, preferring instead to watch a performance of Hamilton.
Unfortunately, Sir Arbuthnot failed to get hold of any other tripgoers at the time to confirm the story, until this week when a second source confirmed it to be true.
In New York you can be a new man… but being an elected MP is a bit more difficult.
SNP’s bald truth
This week the SNP once again came under fire, after it emerged that sex-pest MP Patrick Grady had been allowed to return to the party’s frontbencher as a spokesman during a Westminster debate.
Mr Grady responded for the party during an Urgent Question in the Commons, despite having no formal frontbench role following his suspension last year.
The SNP told the Scottish Sun he is not a spokesperson, but Nat MPs “operate on a ‘rota’ to respond to unplanned Commons business”.
What the party didn’t confess is that the individual who came up with said spokesman rota was none other than the 19-year-old staffer Mr Grady inappropriately touched on a night out in 2016, which led to his suspension from the Commons run the first place.
Goggleboxing
Which GB News presenter refuses to host a regular former MP contributor to the channel after a mid-naughties studio punch-up on TalkRADIO?
Lawmakers and law breakers…
Last week it emerged that Michael Gove’s flagship renters’ reform bill, which primarily hopes to end “no-fault” evictions in England, has once again been put on ice.
Whoever’s to blame, it sounds like it may not affect MPs very much either way.
Another key clause of the bill is to give greater rights to tenants to own a pet in their rental property, ensuring landlords “do not unreasonably withhold consent” when a request is made.
By coincidence, Sir Arbuthnot mentioned this reform to one MP at the recent Westminster Dog of the Year competition.
The MP freely admitted “most MPs just ignore and break the rule anyway”…
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Brexit bulldog
Talking of the Westminster Dog of the Year competition, Sir Arbuthnot got chatting with contestant Mark Fletcher, the Bolsover MP who submitted his miniature poodle Delta.
Given Mr Fletcher is a stalwart 2019 intake Tory MP and Brexiteer, it was natural that Delta should be dolled up in a fetching Union Jack bowtie for the competition.
Asked if this was a pure breed Red Wall pup, Mr Fletcher joked that the poodle is undoubtedly a Brexiteer… because it hates Frenchies.
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