society

Fuck Hansard!

I caught an interesting article on the BBC this week which has since been covered pretty much everywhere. The central character of the piece is the Armed Forces Minister Bob Ainsworth (I’m not one to judge people by names, but intuitively, would you let someone called Bob Ainsworth loose with your Armed Forces?). The story goes that in response to claims from a Tory MP that the army is under-equipped, he shouted “bollocks”.

Whilst claims that he “did it for the lulz” have been denied, his comment has been removed from Hansard – which is the official transcript of parliamentary debates. For me, this raises 3 interesting points…the first is that if the Minister for Armed Forces says something that relates to the Armed Forces is bollocks, then it should be documented…because after all – surely he’s the best placed to opine on the issue?

Also despite the fact that Hansard is not being strictly controlled by Gordon Brown (or indeed the goverment), this censorship is all a little bit 1984, in-keeping with the growing theory that Brown is Stalin.

Image Courtesy of The Spine

I appreciate that unparliamentary language should not be documented in Hansard, however, it does raise the issue of records being abridged/amended and ultimately history being re-written. Very much like when Michael Howard was described as “having something of the night” about him, Brown just can’t shake off the claim that he has “something of the Stalin” about him. The more we see of the government, the more it appears to be shrouded in cloaks and daggers with a side portion of incompetence and flip-flopping.

Overt and Covert dialogue

The second point that this whole “bollocks” story highlighted is that you could potentially have whole conversations in parliament without it ever being documented. You could just swear every other word and your statement would never be documented. For example, if I was in parliament I could say:

Me: I fuckingwant to fuckingknow what happened to that bastard-BAE fucking Saudi bribe shit? Let’s twatting-face it, we all fucking know that it fucking-happened?

Hansard: No comment made.

The third point is a manifestation of the above two, in that it just got me thinking, what has actually been said in parliament that hasn’t been recorded?

Gordon Brown: Oi, jerk-off (gesturing at Cameron). Let’s fucking-face it, you and your foppish fuckwit buddies haven’t got a frigging clue what goes on in the real-bastard Wolrd have you? You just jump on the pissing populist bandwagon to try and get your weasel twatface into the hotseat.

Cameron: Damn fucking skippy, Gordy you obese-retarded-socialist.

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