A Lib Dem MP writes...

When I started this blog I looked forward to a time when it would become the source of reference for the country's elite. The rich and the powerful, the movers and the shakers, the power-brokers and the plutocrats...all would flock to the latest Thimble post about, erm, MPs post. Imagine my disappointment then when this rather vainglorious and desperate fantasy appears already to have been dealt a fatal blow at its very outset.

This blog, ladies and gentlemen, has been read by a Lib Dem MP. It seems that since I was a small boy, merrily hopping on the bus to school with joy in my heart and a Snoopy flask in my satchel, I have always attracted the social outcast - the drunk at the bus stop, the market researcher in the high street, the accountant at dinner parties - but this is the limit....a Lib Dem MP, come on! Grateful for the attention as I am, the Lib Dem constituency is not really the demographic I want to attract I'm afraid.

The Lib Dem MP in question is Martin Horwood, Member of Parliament for Cheltenham, who, in all fairness, left an amiable, if a little preachy, response to a blog-post I did on his parliamentary questions some time ago. Well, it was polite apart from the threat of legal action but I won't dwell on that. Apparently Mr Horwood thinks both a music and a video store in Parliament would be a good idea. He doesn't say whether MPs should be required to put in shifts at either establishment - "Will the Rt Hon Member please pass me the latest Black-Eyed Peas single?" "I refer you to an answer I gave some time ago...i.e. that Black Eyed Peas are a threat to the nation and are, as such, on our proscribed list of banned organisations" - but it's nice to hear some 'out of the box' thinking on these issues. After all, who wants to improve legislative scrutiny when you can open a Virgin Megastore in Central Lobby? They'll be flogging off peerages next.

Perhaps I'm being a tad uncharitable. Just as we were told to love the bomb perhaps we should learn to, erm, tolerate the Lib Dems. A message to Mr Horwood then: if you can forgive me for my lack of human kindness, then maybe I can forgive you for being a Lib Dem. Buy me a pint and we'll say no more about it...

Two Rotherham lads stick together

PMQs were a day for the deputies today. With Blair in a NZ departure lounge ready to jet off to Indonesia, Prescott and Hague stepped up to the despatch box. David Heath – who bears a passing resemblance to Brian Blessed – did the honours for the Lib Dems too but we don’t really need to hear about him…

Prescottian PMQs may hold a macabre fascination for the Westminster anorak but a large groan – one not even muffled by the engine noise of two Jags - must surely emanate from the assembled throng of visitors when they realise their cherished public gallery tickets aren’t going to get them access to the headline act but rather to the teenage garage band who just turned up to play on the undercard…it would be like paying to see the Rolling Stones and getting the Flaming Furnaces…

PMQs with Prescott usually promises a rather different kind of political event to that provided by the usual question time with Blair. The anticipation of the usual ‘punch and judy’ routine is replaced by a different expectation, one of an altogether bloodier spectacle – Prescott single-handedly murdering the English language. It is ‘car-crash’ telly…it may be too awful to watch but, at the same time, you can’t bring yourself to turn away. Prescott’s jarring sentences sometimes feel a little like watching a learner driver crunch through the gears but he gets there in the end. Sometimes. Of course, this has now become something of a Westminster tradition, one eagerly anticipated by the Parliamentary sketchwriters, but today's proceedings did actually deviate a little from the usual script.

Prescott stumbled a little at the start of PMQs but he still felt confident enough to affect a spirit of solidarity with his opposite number. “Us Rotherham lads must stick together” said the Member for Hull East. This apparent bonhomie quickly disappeared, however, when Hague baited Prescott about his one-time failure to pay council tax on a grace-and-favour property. Hague linked this in with an attack on the Government for dropping the £200 council tax rebate for pensioners. Prescott struggling to reply as only he can gave a typically garbled answer, putting words together in a manner suggesting a rather avant-garde approach to both sentence construction and intelligibility.

Hague moved in for the kill at this point and, with a line likely to have been rehearsed for several days beforehand, said (of Prescott's reply) that there was, "so little English in that answer, President Chirac would have been proud of it".

Cue hoots of laughter from the Tory benches. But this was the red-rag to the proverbial bull and, aside from a temporary recurrence of verbal wrestling, this sent Prescott into what turned out to be a pretty effective attack-mode. From this point he largely got the better of Hague. Prescott struck back by saying that while he took the blame for getting his grammar wrong, he would sooner get his words wrong than get his judgement wrong, reminding Mr Hague that he had once described Tory peer Lord Archer as a man of "integrity".

While fired up and clearly riled by Hague’s comments, Prescott also, paradoxically, seemed to relax into the role of PM for the day. When being faced by a closed question – a question tabled in advance on a specific issue – he looked around for the civil servant prepared brief in his folder and said, “closed questions…oh yeah”, mocking his own apparent lack of a quick-fire response on the question. Prescott even managed to reply playfully to Hague’s reference of his 2001 jab, “I thought we had finished with Punch and Judy politics. I know I'll be called Mr Punch, but where do you think that leaves you?"

JP wasn’t finished either, he mentioned about how well everyone had done under a Labour government, including the Honourable Member (Mr. Hague), whose speaking fees somewhat outstrip Prescott’s, and then completed his recovery by telling Hague “Have I got news for you”…another reference to Hague’s outside interests.

All in all, Prescott seemed to come out pretty well for what must be a tough gig for him. What the great British public made of it remains to be seen but John, at least, should sleep well tonight.

Inside an MP's postbag...

The four-hundreth postcard about tail-docking. Occasional rants about youths cycling on the pavement. Pornography.Well-produced corporate fabrication from the likes of BP and Shell telling us how corporately responsible they are ('for every Nigerian villager shot by our petro-dollar militias we plant two fridges in a landfill in Dungeness'). Such is the lot of the average MP's mailbag on an average day.

But today was different. For today we received correspondence from the British Precast Concrete Federation (Ltd). Oh yes. You can imagine my joy. Inside the envelope, along with registration forms for precast concrete events ('Concrete and Chico from Pop Idol - a match made in heaven?'), was a book...the 'little book of concrete'. Inside are 100 ways to maintain calmness through concrete, including the valuable information that precast concrete has the advantage of 'Rapid erection on site'. Ahem.

'Pornography' and 'erection' in the same post. I am desperate to increase my traffic...

For those of you not working in an MP's office, and who would like a copy, may I suggest you contact them at info@britishprecast.org They also hold out the attractive prospect of a follow-up by asking you to email them more suggestions of the advantages of precast. Don't let them down. Be creative. We could have a best-seller on our hands here.

Musical meme

Picked this up from Bloggers4Labour....Pick a band/artist. Then answer these questions using only titles from the band/artist's songs.

(I'll pass this on to Steve-o at hyperrealandsupercool.com...maybe this one will be more to his taste than the last one he didn't do...)

1. Name of band/artist: The Pixies
2. Are you male or female?: Here Comes Your Man
3. Describe yourself: Fat Boy from a Lonely Planet
4. How do you feel about yourself? I Bleed
5. Describe your ex girlfriend/boyfriend: Is She Weird
6. Describe current girlfriend/boyfriend: I'm Amazed
7. Describe where you want to be: The Holiday Song (or Riding The Wild Surf)
8. Describe how you live: Tame
9. Describe how you love: Stormy Weather (or, if I'm to be rude, Bone Machine)
10. What would you ask for if you had just one wish?:[A] Naked Spanish Lady Rock 'N' Roll
11. Share a few words of wisdom: Distance Equals Rate Times Time
12. Now say goodbye: Vamos

Get smarter...don't read Sunday paper lifestyle pieces

(Picture left - brushing your teeth while winking increases IQ by up to 7.2 per cent)

An upcoming BBC programme Get Smarter in a Week was trailed in the Observer yesterday. The scientific thinking behind the programme is that simple changes to our lifestyle - combined with physical exercise - can lead to significant improvements in how well our brains function.

The contestants on the show spend a week following a 50-page Get Smarter Guide and the Observer printed a selection of get smarter tips (possible outcomes provided by the Thimble):

THE GET SMARTER GUIDE

Saturday
Brush your teeth with your 'wrong' hand and take a shower with your eyes closed.

Possible outcome: Toothpaste stains on your 'Saturday night going-out' shirt from inaccurate brushing prompt failure at evening's social event. Your date, taking the view that a man lacking the coordination to brush his teeth properly may not be the man to guide her through the intricacies of the waltz, goes off with your best friend, Dan, who doesn't even brush his teeth.

Go home. Have shower with eyes closed. Fall over, break ankle. Cue six hours in casualty spent with drunks and victims of violent assault. Forced to wait even longer due to a large group of people with severe eye injuries. Doctors conclude injuries consistent with being stabbed in the eye by a toothbrush.

Sunday
Do the crossword or Sudoku puzzle in your Sunday paper and take a brisk walk.

Possible outcome: Go to parents for Sunday dinner. Mum and Dad, learning of your new regime, suggest you are only allowed dinner if you have successfully completed the day's cryptic crossword and Sudoku puzzle. Thankfully you manage to download the day's solutions off the internet and can safely tuck into meat and two veg. Your Nan, unfamiliar with the internet as she is, fails to complete the task and is sent home without any dinner.

Monday
Have oily fish for dinner, and either cycle, walk or take the bus into work.

Possible outcome: Signed off from work with broken ankle. Against medical advice cycle to fishmongers to buy oily fish. Disappointed to find fishmongers has been turned into a trendy theme bar named 'The Cod and Chips'. Drink expensive Czech lager and pay ten quid for a selection of 'crustacean crudites' (crab sticks) before slouching in a corner with a copy of the Ancient Mariner.

Tuesday
Select unfamiliar words from the dictionary and work them into conversations.

Possible outcome: Decide to use the words 'feculance', 'micturate' and 'discombobulate' without bothering to look up their meaning in the dictionary. Cause medium to serious offence at the local swimming pool by outlining your plan to "swim with considerable feculance and grace" for the next hour and puzzle staff by declaring that you plan to 'micturate for some time before deciding to join up on direct debit'.

Popping into the local Starbucks to grab a cappuccino with double discombobulate doesn't seem to cause too much trouble. You still feel cheated, however, when you find you have paid three pound more for a coffee that tastes exactly the same as the un-discombobulated version.

Wednesday
Go to yoga, Pilates or a meditation class, and talk to someone you don't know.

Possible outcome: Going to yoga has an unexpectedly positive effect on your sense of well-being. Feeling upbeat and positive you decide to stop and talk to a stranger. Stranger turns around from the urinal and pisses on your shoes. No amount of meditation is going to get those stains out of your trousers.

Thursday
Take a different route to work; watch Countdown or Brainteaser.

Possible outcome: Decide to skip the tube and take the river bus to work only to find a whale has ventured down the Thames. The London Transport River Boat you are travelling on is commandered for the whale rescue. and you are forced to wade into the water, wearing your best Savile Row suit, to aid the effort to keep the mammal from dehdyration. After five hours of alternatively filling buckets and taking pictures with your camera-phone, you realise your suit is ruined and that Thursday is, after all, a 'home-working' day.

You return home in time for Countdown.

Friday
Avoid caffeine or alcohol; memorise your shopping list

Possible outcome: Learn a mnemonic ('DON'T FORGET') to remember the shoppping. However, things go amiss when you return not with the duck, onion, nectarines, tomatoes, oranges, foie gras (FG...) and thyme as planned, but a dog, an orangutan, Nescafe, the Times, 'Fools Gold' by the Stone Roses and a bottle of tequila. Realising this is not the menu you had in mind for the evening's dinner party you drink yourself silly on Nescafe and Cuervo Gold tequila and pass out around 7pm.

Gordon Brown - pink shirts but where are the green credentials?

I attended the "Sustainable Energy Policy for the UK" conference at Congress House this week. Trade and Industry Sec. of State Alan Johnson almost managed to get through his speech without mentioning the nuclear option but, as you would expect given the Energy Review is still open, he didn't really say anything new.

Dieter Helm spoke of the need for Government to set a framework for energy markets to work effectively in terms of improving the energy supply infrastructure and in terms of reducing carbon emissions. He said a lot more than this but I won't expand on this here. Sir David King, Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government, outlined the scientific evidence for global warming and offered dire predictions for the planet's future but mixed this with a degree of optimism at what might be possible through technological advances and international politicial agreement.

Attending the conference made me think about the future direction that Labour might take on issues such as the environment and climate change. While some may question the pace of progress under Labour in terms of the UK's own efforts to tackle climate change, Tony Blair has shown a great deal of commitment in raising the issue of climate change on a national and international level (it was one of the two main priorities of the UK's G8 presidency last year). This is in stark contrast to the record of the Chancellor who rarely (I would venture it is never but it is said that you should never say never) spoken with any enthusiasm on issues concerning the environment.

Okay, Gordon Brown is Chancellor and green issues might (wrongly) be thought of as being out of bounds for the man holding the purse strings. But given that Brown, in moves to prove he can talk about more than pounds, shillings and prudence, has been coming out with his thoughts on issues of Britishness and constitutional reform there shouldn't be any excuse for him not now to talk about the environment.

Of course, the excuse could be that he is not actually that interested in climate change. His commitment to world poverty issues is genuine and long-held but climate change probably doesn't register with Brown in the same way and for Brown these considerations may conflict with his belief in enterprise. But Brown needs to be interested in environmental issues and possibly not 'just' for the sake of the planet. David Cameron's opportunistic conversion to all things green is political shorthand for 'we've changed, we're now young and fresh and interested in the same single issue politics as you are...'.

Polls might be unreliable but a recent Guardian/ICM poll showed that Cameron was more convincing to the public on green issues than both Blair and Brown (who lagged even further behind in the poll). This poll might not tell us much but for me it reinforces the idea that Gordon Brown and Labour should come out all guns blazin' on the environment. There are environmental achievements under Labour that we can be proud of and we should say so while putting down a marker for further action too. This would call Cameron's bluff, provide an opportunity to show Brown is in tune with climate change issues, and hopefully lead to some bold Government action to help the UK meets its own carbon emissions commitments in 2020.