MP's looking silly

Perish the thought!

No sooner do I wonder aloud about what you might read if Hansard were a precise record of what was said in Parliament, then I am reminded that Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson is trying to overturn a ban on the wider availability of parliamentary material.

In an early day motion on 2 April, Ms Swinson noted "that there is currently a ban on the posting of parliamentary video clips on websites described by the relevant authorities as `third party hosting websites'". That's Youtube, in case you hadn't guessed.

Her fond hope is that by allowing wider dissemination of such material, there would be greater public involvement in the political process.

Of course, some MP's argue that the end result of such a policy could be episodes like this:



But mostly, the argument seems to boil down to the simple self-interest one. The public right to view should be restricted in case MP's decide to make utter tits of themselves.

"Hear! Hear!"