The Christmas Bells should certainly be ringing in Lincolnshire this year, given that my local MP, one Quentin Davies, is the same Quentin Davies who took £20,700 of taxpayers money in expenses to refurbish the bell tower in one of his homes (also paid for by us). It would therefore be most charitable of Quentin to let Ding Dong Merrily On High resonate across the county on Christmas morning, when kids are breaking their expensive nano-wii pods and parents are having a slanging match in the kitchen because someone forgot to buy the bread sauce and Granny Ida won’t eat the turkey without it.
How many times did I tell you to write a list? Did you listen to me?
Do you ever listen to me? Yada, yada, yada ...
Of course this is rather unlikely to happen – the bells, I'm taking about here, not the nano-wii and Granny Ida's bread sauce, both of which are as assured as the fact that Councils won't bother to grit the roads as it's too dangerous to send the gritters out in ice because of health and safety reasons. Quentin won't share his bells with the peasants, unless of course, he has his Dickens eureka moment during Christmas Eve night.
If the ghost of Christmas past should visit him, it would be Maggie Thatcher. This is because up until 2007 Quentin was a true blue Tory MP, as is expected in these parts where fox hunting used to be the Boxing Day staple until it was discovered that shooting chavs was much more fun and actually got rid of undesirable vermin that did far more damage than a fox ever could. Ever seen a fox get drunk, steal an Astra or wear a baseball cap back-to-front? There you are, then - welcome to Quentin's world. But when the future of Labour looked reasonably rosy and the Tories were merely a dot on the political horizon, good old Quentin decided overnight that he wasn’t quite as right wing as he thought he was, and maybe old Stalin had a point. So, he defected to Labour, without having the decency to call a by-election. Quentin was rewarded for his lack of moral standing by being appointed Defence Minister, surely the most inappropriate job for any politician who doesn’t even know what side he’s on? In Italy, yes, okay. But not Ilkeston, or even Islington. For a while everything looked tickety-boo, and then St Tony of the Smile departed and in came the ghost of Christmas Present: our Gordon, who managed to destroy the country and any credibility that Labour still had in record time. Looks like it’s time for Quentin to change sides again, which leaves us with the mystery of who is the ghost of Christmas Future? Nick Clegg, come on down … .
Cartoon by artist Gerald Scarfe
If Quentin does receive visits from Maggie, Gordon and Nick then surely the bells will ring out on Christmas Day. But if he’s up all night filling out expenses forms for the family Christmas presents, then I fear that it will be another Silent Night.
Oh well - Merry Grumpy Christmas everyone!
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