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...