DODGY DAVE

It's a funny old world, isn't it?

One in which when the SNP clap in Westminster, it is wrong and disrespectful and Mr Speaker gets quite schoolmarmish about it and tells then that while they may have meant well, they haven't yet been in England long enough to understand the different way they do things...properly. 

So whilst it is not considered bad manners to boo and roar and wave papers in the air and behave like a bunch of 6 year olds whose teacher has popped out of the room for a second, it is extremely bad manners, uncouth and beastish to clap...as one might do at, say, the opera.

Then a few weeks later when a some members stick a knife in Willie Hague's back while he is trying to stick one in the back of the Speaker, on Cameron's orders, and the Speaker comes out smiling, while Willie Hague's last act in the House of Commons is to be resoundingly humiliated, it suddenly has become good manners to clap and all is well in the world.

And it seems to stay like that. Because not long after that Blairite Hilary Benn makes a warmongering speech, going against his party leader's stance on war in Syria (one we can neither afford nor win), it's all Tory hands to the clap again. Note, it's the last few minutes of the video that you'll want, containing clapping and the embarrassing praise from Hammond of Benn's speech. The rest is too awful for words.

Now Munguin isn't a betting animal but he reckons a pound to a pinch of snuff that if the SNP try clapping again, it will have reverted to boorishness, and not the behaviour expected of gentlemen of the Hon, Rt Hon, Learned or Gallant persuasion.

So it shouldn't come as any great surprise to any of our readers that when David Cameron insulted Dennis Skinner a few months ago by telling him he could take his pension at any time, and indeed he advised him to do so, rude and ungentlemanly behaviour to a man with more experience than Mr Cameron will ever have, and who is old enough to be Cameron's father, nothing was said about it.

 And he has form. Here he called Mr Skinner a dinosaur.

However, when Mr Skinner said that Dave was dodgy, an understatement of mammoth proportions in anyone's terms (given that he clearly lied all week about his gains from offshore investments), Skinner was told to retract, and when he refused,  to leave the chamber.

Rather like the subject of the business, there seems to be one rule for some, and one rule for the rest.

Does anyone seriously think that Dave isn't dodgy? or the Commons corrupted?