Avoid hypocrisy and brand them all blackguards
Published 10 Feb 2012 09:30
GIVEN the venue and the class of person lolling about the place when he said it, I can't have been the only one surprised when Dave got rollicked by the Speaker for using the word 'hypocrisy'.
After all he was addressing the real Opposition, not his own disaffected back benches or the coalesced Lib Dems whose personal loyalty is as faint as heat sourced from one of old Huhne's expensively idling windmills.
But, even when highlighting Labour's puzzling indignation at Dave's handling of the RBS chairman's bonus row, apparently using the word hypocrisy just isn't on. It is unparliamentary language. So is 'twit', and both are guaranteed to have our sawnoff Speaker hopping about like a demented goblin.
Then again, also consigned to this lexicon of the political black arts are the likes of blackguard, coward, git, guttersnipe, hooligan, ignoramus, liar, pipsqueak, rat, slimy, swine, stoolpigeon, tart, traitor and wart. Now what appears mildly amusing and, begging their honourable pardons, more than a tad coincidental, is that if you peruse that forbidden list you'll notice all those words have something in common; or Commons. Each and every one could, now or at some time in the past or future, be applied to them; that shiftless bunch of ne'er do wells draped across the green benches, uttering occasional guttural sounds, fiddling with their mobile phones, or popping up and down like spring-loaded puppets with the dual intention of getting spotted by the TV cameras or, if all else fails, actually posing a question before trooping off to vote according to instructions.
Now across the Irish Sea, the Dáil Éireann also has a blacklist, featuring brat, buffoon, chancer, communist, corner boy (a particular favourite of my late Mum, God rest her), coward, fascist, fatty, gurrier (synonym for corner boy), guttersnipe, hypocrite, rat, scumbag and yahoo. However there's definitely a bit more leeway in Dublin's fair city.
Take last week when Taoiseach Enda Kenny's grinning image appeared on the front pages from Davos having his hair playfully ruffled by that slimy pipsqueak, Nasty Nick Sarkozy.
Back in Leinster House, Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams, albeit still relatively unfamiliar with the democratic process, sniffily declared: "It is inappropriate for a Taoiseach to act like an eejit when he meets the French president."
During subsequent angry exchanges, Enda defiantly noted Gerry had been "buddy buddy with some very shadowy creatures over the past 30 years". Well, at least nobody mentioned hypocrisy.
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