Westminster Corridors

"Parliament had doused its light, For the feast of Yu-ell, When Toniben came into sight Gathering winter fu-ell."

Thus carolling moodily away, Puzzle remembered that Parliament was once called the Grand Inquest of the nation, the place where the Crown's Ministers could and should be brought face to face with those who question their actions. Poorly though some of the sad fellows who observe it constantly might think it discharged that function, surely it does it a deal better than when the said inquest is conducted by means of letters, blown like confetti into the offices of the daily journals.

Toniben, his face as shining with eagerness as a big boy scout in bob-a-job week, was first at it. That surprised Puzzle not at all. It would be unlike Toniben to miss the chance of snatching the lead when Midshipman Wilson was possibly brooding over his Christmas cards from Willy Brandt and Golda Meir and wondering why Skipper Heath had not set up another Winter Emergency Committee. in tact lomben had whipped in about three letters proving himself the champion of the underprivileged miners before the Midshipman roused himself.

He had asked far more obvious questions than he could have got away with in the Commons without the Midshipman interrupting him.

So smartly did he scribble his letters that some scribes evidently were moved to ask the Midshipman if he were still the leader of the Opposition. So Mr Wilson tardily took his pipe out of his mouth and muttered a few words into a microphone to the effect that of course Toniben was right, that he, the Midshipman, had approved of all his goings-on, but that he was now taking charge so the Skipper should watch out.

By this time Toniben's letter-writing frenzy had brought another fellow into the cockpit who couldn't have got involved if it had been in the Commons. Lord Ruddigore Carrington demanded if Toniben wanted to bring about the collapse of vital community services, in particular that vital service activated in many households by pulling the chain. Strange, but Farmer Giles Prior had been specially worried about the maintenance of that service a week or two earlier. It seems as though the Central Office research department discovered that there was a special link between coal and

sewage to which the attention of the public needed to be drawn.

Which reminds Puzzle, irrelevantly, of a tale once told him by a Civil Servant friend, who inquired politely in a rural Irish pub for the location of the gentleman's convenience. To which his host, standing on the threshold, replied with a broad sweep of the arm which embraced the whole horizon from Killarney's lakes to the Mountains of Mourne. Evidently they are not so vulnerable to coal strikes in the Irish Republic.

Ruddigore also summoned up a weird vision of millions of coaches and horses galloping madly through Phase Three, which soCinds as though the Skipper had been dreaming again.

Meanwhile, the rustle of Toniben's letters in the still night startled a couple of the geese in the Liberal Capitol. Gargantuan Liberal, Mr Cyril Smith, and his friend, Tiny Trevor Jones, started to cackle. They were not so worried about vital community services as they were about why Banker Jeremy Thorpe wasn't worrying about vital community services.

To this Thorpe wittily retorted that Gargantuan Smith had made a bit of an ass of himself, something else which wouldn't have been said if it had been in the House of Commons.

Then fearing that the Post Office, still staggering from the Christmas mail, would refuse to accept any more letter-bombs, the Young David Steel posted one off to the effect that it might be a good idea if the Grand Inquest of the nation resumed its sittings a week early.

To Puzzle this came like a lightning flash of sanity. Why not, indeed? Then there could be an end to all this mad letter writing, and Toniben could be pushed back into his place as about third or fourth fiddle in Wilson's orchestra. Questioning the Government's wisdom and candour at a time of crisis is what Parliament should be about. With the nation on short time, a little overtime by its elected spokesmen might be appropriate.

Having said this, because he thinks it to be his pious duty, Puzzle must instantly confess to a deep depression of spirit at the prospect of a fearful bout of statistic slinging when MPs meet again. To have Toniben hurling millions of tons of coal stocks at Boom Peter Walker across the dispatch boxes does not offer for him great promise of wise and witty debate.

Speaking soberly, Puzzle does honestly believe that question and answer is what the Commons is for. True, he deplored the practice of Speaker King of compiling useless statistics of questions asked and answered in the Question Hour. Speaker King took a mighty pride in getting more questions dealt with than ever before.

He was wont to travel through the daily list at an unrelenting trot. At the end of the session the records were totted up, and marvellous they were, though they did not reveal how many of the questions were silly, and how many of the answers told nobody anything worth" knowing.

Fondly Puzzle recalls the best question he ever heard. It was also the shortest. As a supplementary to a glib and wordy Ministerial reply, Mr Duncan Sandys simply asked: "Why?". It was devastating. For the Minister didn't know why. It was the one point the Civil Servants had missed out of his brief.

The best Ministerial retort? It is attributed to Lloyd George. A young Tory, who had just vastly improved his fortunes by marrying an heiress and adding her name to his, asked LG to define the phrase "the unearned increment."

Lloyd George's reply sped across the Chamber like a javelin. "On the spur of the moment, the best illustration which comes to mind is the hyphen in the hon. gentleman's name."

How long before we hear the like of that

again? Tom Puzzle