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Sunday 18 July 2010

Parliamentary participation

In the recent election UCUNF argued participation in parliament was a crucial test and the means of contributing to our national demorcatic life.  It now appears that the new intake of Conservative MPs have been failing the test and took participation so seriously that they have now had to be ordered to the chamber by David Cameron after the Speaker complained:

"...that only a few dozen of the 650 MPs were prepared to attend regularly. Most simply turned up for Prime Ministers' Questions once a week and made "zoo noises""

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not quite, Lee.

UCUNF said it was important to participate *in government*, not just in parliament. The argument was that NI's needs *particularly* needed to be heard at that level.

That said, any MP who is not attending *at all* should hang their head in shame. The DUP endorsed just such a candidate. UCUNF didn't.

Lee said...

Nice try but they didn't just go on about government but parliament as well hence the persistent references to full-time MPs etc.

Lee said...

Apologies omitted ur second point.

If you mean Sylvia Hermon then just say so. Non-attendance couldn't be predicted before the fact. She has one term of good attendance and one of pooorer (with family illness a partial explanation).

The endorsement which counted was that of the North Down electorate which handed UCUNF its arse on a plate (as predicted by pretty much everyone outside the UCUNF bubble). Learning the lessons from that would be more sensible that moaning about it.