BEWARE OF GEEKS BEARING GIFTS

SOFT SPOKEN ALISTAIR DARLING, pictured above showing his old bag to the awaiting press on Budget Day yesterday, is the sort of dour Scot one suspects of having an ability to tell a joke without actually understanding the punch-line. Should this be the case, he fits perfectly into the tradition of Socialist and Labour Party politicians throughout the ages, many of whom have had Pict blood in their veins, in their ability to maintain thorough blankness of expression when all around are guffawing in the proverbial side-splitting manner.

YET WHILE THIS MIGHT BE ACCEPTABLE MORES at a party in Kensington and Chelsea, for example, it is surely not the done thing in the British parliament, where one expects jokes to be made with a smirk, if not with a wink and a twinkle. Otherwise it would be difficult for the Liberal Democrat MPs to know when to laugh. Then again, in the case of yesterday’s typically sneaky Scots budget, perhaps a smirk would be seen as adding insult to injury, putting Darling in the league of the last Scot Chancellor of the Exchequer, who only recently added insult to perjury over financing British troops.

FRENCH KISSING IN THE UAE

WESTERNERS WHO ENJOY A GOOD SNOG, which is possibly a considerable number of us, would be well advised to avoid visiting places such as Dubai, where, due to local laws, a “British pair” (I am quoting several newspapers) are being held after breaching strict public decency laws. Apparently the “pair”, Mr Ayman Najafi, 24, and Ms Charlotte Lewis, 25, indulged in a kiss on the lips in a restaurant, and may now face a prison sentence after a written complaint lodged at the Dubai Misdemeanours Court by a 38-year-old-mother, who was “shocked” and “distressed” to see such behavior in public.

I HAVE NOTHING BUT SYMPATHY for the mother and her complaint. What would become of our society if we allowed mature adults to behave like teenagers? And I am personally in favour of a blanket ban on kissing in restaurants in general. This is not because I have anything against kissing per se – and indeed, although I do not wish to go into details about my private life in this situation, I am liable to become involved in kissing with my good lady wife at the drop of a hat, as we sometimes say, as well as other items of clothing – but I do think that sexual decorum needs to be maintained in public if we wish to continue to claim our superiority over the animal kingdom.

YET I AM SLIGHTLY CONCERNED as to the full and future well-being of Mr Najafi, who apparently put in a “distraught” phone call to his “distraught mother”, stating that he had done “nothing wrong”, and hoped to “clear his name.” His mother states, we are told, that he would never do anything like this “not even in Britain”.

MY OWN, SOMEWHAT TAINTED, VIEW of these lamentable events is that a man of 24 who would never kiss a woman in public should not be allowed to leave the country, and would perhaps be better off staying in north London forever; he can be of no use to any foreign country in terms of productivity. Another possible option would be to forcibly send such chaps to France for a while before allowing them to “put themselves out there”. The experience gained among the madamoiselles and madames over the channel (as well as a good deal of the gentlemen) will turn any young British labial virgin into a first class puckerer.

THE EXPENSIVE FOUR

POLITICAL SCANDAL LOVERS will be extremely happy this week over the news that there is a slim chance that three Members of Parliament in Britain may soon be on their way to prison. Those of us who enjoy seeing robbers punished, of course, will already be sated in our knowledge that there is little or no chance that they will be able to continue their careers in parliament after having been outed as no more than penny-pinching, underhanded, devious little fichers who should never have been allowed into positions of authority in the first place; indeed, were it not for their allegiance to the Labour and Socialist Party all three of them would no doubt never have managed to rise above their god-given natural statuses as chimney sweeps, supermarket shelf stackers and secondary school teachers.

MY PICTURE ABOVE SHOWS these crooks in the company of another crook, a lawyer, on the occasion of their attempt to have the charges against them thrown out of court under the guise of “parliamentary privilege”. Everything indicates, of course, that when having been brought “up before”, as I believe the expression to be, none of them will be “sent down”, and much less “banged up”.

WHETHER OR NOT any of these phrasal verbs will be brought about over the Right Honourable Gentlemen in question, the matters unfolding are the most important constitutional events since good Queen Victoria refused to believe that lesbians existed. And not since the famous case of “The Five Members”, in 1642, when good King Charles I arrested some “peskie and troublesome” members of parliament for causing trouble, encouraging pro-Scottish behavior and “getting on the queen’s nerves” has the British parliament had its collar so felt.

THE GENTLEMEN CLAIM defence under the laws of privilege as set out in the 1689 Bill of Rights, suggesting that Members of Parliament should not have to obey the law like “normal” citizens, which is indeed what happens in Europe in general, and in the feudal European Parliament in particular, but the smart money on this case suggests that parliamentary privilege, as it is known today – freedom of speech in parliament and in parliamentary papers, freedom from public arrest (not prosecution) over civil matters, and freedom to request the authority of the Speaker over civil authorities whenever on issues relating to parliamentary duties – will be the ultimate loser in this affair. The end result will be that parliamentary privilege will be downgraded to the sort of professional privilege enjoyed by doctors, lawyers and university professors as they go about their daily activities: i.e., a bit of sex on the side with secretaries, nurses, patients, students and (for the very desperate) colleagues.

IN THE MEANTIME, my reading on the subject in most of the national papers has left me with a linguistic doubt: having seen so many variations, I am confused as to the correct way to write “scum-bags”.