PRAYERS in the Commons is a solemn – and fairly unusual – business. There’s a lot of turning around and stuff, all faintly Masonic, actually. But apparently it’s all to do with accommodating members’ swords. Or something.
Now mobile phones have always been frowned upon in the chamber, although they’re more tolerated now than in the past. But when your phone goes off during prayers (as someone’s did today), you can expect Mr Speaker to take a dim view. When it goes off twice during prayers (as it did today) you can expect Mr Speaker to give you a ticking off.
When your phone goes off during prayers, twice, and your ringtone is the main theme from Star Wars (and all this happened today), you can expect not to be called to speak again until about the turn of the next century.
And no, it wasn’t me.
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Wednesday 8 October 2008 at 1:46 pm
Yours would be the Dr Who theme, right?
Wednesday 8 October 2008 at 1:47 pm
Actually, no.
Wednesday 8 October 2008 at 3:49 pm
My sister’s is the Doctor Who theme. It’s very embarrassing in public places…
Wednesday 8 October 2008 at 4:54 pm
IWhen I was a party press officer, I once had the Anthem of the Soviet Union as my ringtone (it was an in joke).
I think Tony Blair wondered about my loyalty to the New Labour project when it started ringing when my the Stalinist anthem blared out during one of his visits….
Wednesday 8 October 2008 at 9:27 pm
I was kidding, you know.
Wednesday 8 October 2008 at 11:30 pm
Labourmatters has a sence of humour. Mind, you have to have if the project is near to its end.
Thursday 9 October 2008 at 12:37 am
I don’t know about you, Johnny Norfolk, but it must be significant that many MPs appear to think it’s “cool” (what’s the temperature got to do with it?) to have the theme tunes from children’s films and television programmes as the ring tones on their portable hearing devices.
By the way, when you say that the “…the project is near to its end” I assume you mean that the Blair/Brown/Mandelson ‘project’ that was aimed at getting a NuLabour government elected in 1997?
Yes, they did that. They they went on to tax us to the hilt, waste most of it on failed social experiments, give vast amount of the powers of our Parliament to the EU and have now bankrupted the country to the point where our grandchildrens’ children will be paying for it for their life times.
All Labour Governments run out of money in the end and so I think we can say that the “Project” is now officially over.
Thursday 9 October 2008 at 10:25 am
disagree that ‘all labour governments run out of money in the end’.
what happens is that we , the taxpayer, having run out of both money and patience cry ‘enough’!
hope you survive Tom the electoral blood bath to come !