Sunday, January 21, 2007

A motion for a dead dog?

Well I suppose, if Celebrity Big Brother can make it into Parliament, then why shouldn't a celebrity chef's dead dog?
"That this House expresses its sympathies to Rick Stein and his family on the passing away of their characterful Jack Russell, Chalky, acknowledging the heartache and distress that losing a family pet can cause."
EDM 685
Update: For anyone wondering, this is not a joke. There really is an Early Day Motion about Rick Stein's dead dog. Honestly.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Early day motions are said to cost the taxpayer about £200. They should not be used as playthings by populist MPs.

Anonymous said...

Where was the EDM for when one of my cats died?

You would think that Andrew Pelling MP had better things to do with his time.

Croydonian said...

Oh my giddy aunt. Pelling's my MP.

Will B said...

Such a waste of money, and from a Conservative no less! -le sigh-

Anonymous said...

I wonder if any other contributors can enlighten me. What useful purpose do Early Day motions serve? They appear to be used frivolously by MP's, and although £200 is nothing in terms of Government spending, I would hesitate before spending that much money on anything. Whilst my reaction was shock that such a hard working MP would consider such an EDM worthwhile, Mrs Catastrophe's reaction was to go all gooey about "Chalky". Perhaps Mr Pelling is a better judge of his electorate than I am.

Will B said...

OC, EDM's are motions put forward for debate without any fixed date for said debate.

While the topics hardly ever come to the floor, they are usually used by MP's to put their opinion of something trivial or constituency based (not that I'm saying that constituency issues are trivial! HO NO!) on record, to canvass other MP's support and for use as a petiton for MP's within the house.

If you think this EDM is bad you should check out some of the others...