Field Of Dreams
‘OF course politicians are all just like us. As Labour MP Andy Reed says on his website, Most MPs are just ordinary people doing an extraordinary job.
| Spot the balls |
While we pause to think of the other MPs those ordinary people doing ordinary jobs the Guardian conducts a survey to see just how ordinary our elected representatives are.
And after seeing their responses to a series of questions, the conclusion is that the typical MP is a football obsessive with a liking for middle of the road rock music and little interest in political ideology.
They are middle mangers, who had it not been for their overriding sense of self-importance and vanity would be working as company reps, navigating their Mondeos full of ladys hosiery and snack food round the country to the tune of the Light House Familys Lifted and other musical inducements to suicide.
A Fifth of labour MPs like to unwind by watching and playing football a fact that puts us in mind of Tonys Blair having a kick around with Kevin Keegan in 1996 and telling us how as a lad he sat behind the goal at Newcastle United at a time when the Gallowgate end had, er, no seats.
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But not all MPs are inspired by a craving to be popular and unexceptional, and of the 98 Labour MPs who responded to the Guardians survey, 11 cited a political philosopher or great thinker as having had a profound influence of their careers.
For the Tories, only one out of 44 respondents claimed to have been politically inspired by a higher mind.
Although the Tories can reclaim some political kudos with the finding that of 165 MPs who replied, eleven said Margaret Thatcher had influenced their politics – although four of them said it was because they hated her so much.
But while Thatcher is top dog, only two Labour MPs polled were proud to call themselves Blairites; three said they were ideologically aligned to Gordon Brown.
But the chief finding of this research is that the vast majority of the countrys 659 MPs found something better do to than take part in a survey like watching football, playing keepy-uppy with their new secretary, scoring…’
Posted: 4th, April 2005 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
