Shouty MP is shouty

Here's a clip from yesterday's Prime Minister's Questions in the Mother of All Parliaments, the final PMQs in this session of Parliament. The house is crowded and overheated and noisy, and when MP Anne Marie Morris stands up to ask a question about education, the noise level rises, and she begins to shout, and the noise rises, and she shouts louder, and soon she's gesticulating with both arms -- including the one that's in a sling. It's pretty totally insane.

(via Today in Parliament podcast)

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tsunami65

Lizards, every one of them.
- http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith
  
  I voted for the other lizards.
  
  (BTW I am not her doctor but I hope she takes more care of that arm).
- http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo
  
  The ‘shouty’ lizard seems the most likeable…
SpaceBeers

I can’t stand PMQ’s. It just comes off as an incredibly childish chance for a room for old swine to bray and jeer at each other. It really makes you question how much longer people will put up with these d-bag’s running things.
- ocker3
  
  Can anyone succinctly explain why such nonsense is allowed to go on when someone is asking a question, even a softball one?
  - CaptainPedge
    
    Because it always has.
  - arboreal
    
    They’re braying more than usual because parliamentary recess is about to begin.
    
    6 weeks holiday! Paid! Lovely!
    - ldobe
      
      By the sound of it they belong in a place where recess means 30 minutes of kickball, or if you were a weird kid like me, walking laps along the perimeter fence while reading science fiction.
  - sarahnocal
    
    Because they are awake and paying attention?
  - EH
    
    Such nonsense! Well I never!
  - http://www.facebook.com/csismeiro Carlos Sismeiro
    
    In one single word: tradition.
  - http://profiles.google.com/carboncow robert feller
    
    and as a stupid american i’m blown away by this. i listen to most slick sounding brit types and love the accent but more important the focused word choice and (often) incredible manors…then i see this crap and it reminds me of house americans in congress wish they could be…like that jerk off that yelled “you lie” to POTUS…i’m glad we have our (mostly) quiet respect here, it allows one to focus on the message. when you are permitted to get this worked up your brain tunes out reason and logic and a chance to empathize with another view…
- twianto
  
  Nah, it’s much better and more direct than places where Congresses, Senates and what not spend their time proposing to draft a query about the possibility of planning a debate on whether they should discuss a certain subject.
  - Just_Ok
    
    The committee is stilling investigating the potential for bi-partisan agreement concerning whether the toilet paper should go over or under in the washrooms.
Fex

Your elected officials, ladies and gentlemen.* Good luck.

*If you do not live in the UK, some substitution of elected officials may occur.
- Just_Ok
  
  I *wish* we could sub our elected officials.
http://twitter.com/Minus2_C Jeff A. Boyd

FUS RO DAH!
http://twitter.com/toby1kenobi toby1kenobi

It’s incredibly embarrassing, that this freaking pantomime is how business is conducted in our parliament. I heard this on the Today program this morning, PMQs makes me cringe anyway but this took the flipping biscuit.
- EH
  
  Would you prefer the “business,” as you call it, to arrive packaged for predetermined votes like it does here in the US?
squeeziecat

if the goons around her weren’t all heckling, she wouldn’t have to shout… what a ridiculous and barbaric system (one we share in Canada, and it is no better here).
- curgoth
  
  My first thought was “Don’t make us fetch John Baird!”
  - Ryan Lenethen
    
    I visualize that as them wheeling him out on a little silence of the lambs restraint cart, with the mask, snarling and spitting.
    
    Of course now they have Dean “The Mouth” Del Mastro…
- Maladi
  
  I feel exactly the same way. She’s not shouting because she’s cracking under pressure, or losing control, she’s shouting because so many in the room are being disruptive and unprofessional.
  
  Furthermore, I wonder about the ethos behind the fact that this post is mocking her shouting as opposed to mocking the ludicrous behavior of the people in the room. Would it have the same tagline if it were a man who was raising his voice to be heard over the cajoling of his audience? Outburst? Hardly. This smacks of sexism.
Boundegar

Well what do you expect when you allow the commoners in? They don’t even have wigs!
- Shashwath T.R.
  
  Actually, they still have them. But they call them differently…
http://www.spellingmistakescostlives.com darrrrrrn

I like shouting, I think it’s good.
- malindrome
  
  I’m the loudest! I’m the loudest!
puppybeard

I’m Irish and I’m glad to see it’s not just our politicians who carry on like the thick kids back in school.
- http://twitter.com/chriscoreline chris coreline
  
  Im Irish, and i am ashamed that despite a very liberal and progressive declaration of independence and constitution that our politicians have become just as much of a bunch of feckless gobshites as our neighbors to the east.
kobrakai

Has anyone ever tried whispering or would everyone else just continue to bray like jackasses whether they can hear the speaker or not?
http://web.ncf.ca/shawnhcorey/ Shawn H Corey

The Speaker should be held in Contempt of Parliament for letting the noise levels get out of hand.
- Daneel
  
  The Speaker is already held in contempt by most of Parliament. Especially by the members of his own party.
  - Wreckrob8
    
    And he/she doesn’t care what the fuckers think of him/her because only three non-royal individuals, the prime minister, the lord chancellor and the lord president of the council rank higher in precedence.
    - Daneel
      
      So he ranks lower than Nick Clegg? That’s pretty low.
      - Wreckrob8
        
        I think it is necessary to separate the incumbent from the office in this case. Nick Clegg got lucky.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  John Bercow? He seems to suffer from some sort of attention seeking disorder. He enjoys the drama.
Maria Pranzo

I’ve always loved Prime Minister’s Question Time. As an American, it seems that your politicians are much more engaged than ours. Take a look at CSPAN and watch Congress — half of them are absent or asleep in their chairs at any given time.
- SumAnon
  
  Another American seconds this. It’s painful to watch congress, because it’s clear no one there cares, even those who show up everyday. And its widely known that for mandatory votes, half the officials don’t read what their voting on. In this clip, at least Parliament looks like it’s members give a damn about what’s happening. Passion in politics can be a good thing.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Or, they’re just putting on a very loud dog and pony show to keep the public from paying attention to the backroom deals that actually run the country.
    - SumAnon
      
      That’s still a lot more credit than I’d give Congress.
- Daneel
  
  It’s the same in the UK most of the time, just not during PMQs.
- theophrastvs
  
  hear (zzz) hear! shouting at least suggests that government hasn’t been completely superseded by lobbyists in the cloakroom.
- Cypherpunks (a public account)
  
  It’s because they stayed up all night boozing and partying (I used the kinder word) with their lobbyists.
Jeremy Mesiano-Crookston

By the by Americans, we here in Canada call our version “Question Period”. QP for short. Nobody in my entire life has ever called it PMQ, or “Prime Minister’s Question Time”, which sounds like the worst children’s show imaginable.

But our MPs are also assholes. In fact, certain junior MPs are designated as hollerers, who sit at the back and whose job is quite literally to scream shit during question period. It’s a juvenile system.
- Maria Pranzo
  
  That’s what it’s called when it runs on television here…I assumed that was just what it’s called.
- Shashwath T.R.
  
  We call it Zero Hour in India. As in, all the zeros in Parliament get to shout a lot…
  
  But it’s a key piece of transparency in the way that our government functions. I really don’t know if we should drop it, or what we’d replace it with even if we did… I guess that’s the same of any parliamentary system?
- kinscore
  
  It does sound like a terrible children’s show, but I think it should be made anyway, at least as a comedy sketch. The prime minister and a group of young children all sitting in child-sized chairs talking about politics and the processes of Parliment.
- theophrastvs
  
  If only there were an objective scale of politician assholiness, (perhaps in milli-Liebermans), i feel great confidence in that the states would globally dominate.
http://twitter.com/petitepoubelle petite poubelle

I am a closed captioner for the hearing impaired who captions lots of CSPAN. “Prime Minister’s Questions” is one of the funnest and most difficult shows to caption. I love it. It’s so much better than the US House of Reprobates.
Just_Ok

And people wonder where internet trolling came from.
Sparrow

A future history of British politics will define these MP’s as a group of asshats who were first againt the wall when the revolution came.
- Guest
  
  Whoah! Hyperbolic rage directed at men and women who communicate in hyperbole? I hope that was irony.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    You know who else hopes that was irony?
    - Guest
      
      What? I mentioned the possibility that it might be ironic; it’s just that I’ve heard that phrase spoken many times in politics where it sadly wasn’t ironic at all.
      
      You like messing with me, no?
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        It was a joke.
    - Guest
      
      I still hate you.
Cowicide

Goes off like a Monty Python skit and I don’t mean that in a good way. I did enjoy her little smirk at the end, though.
joeposts

We really need a plugin to turn all public political debates into “Herp Derps.”
millie fink

Would any of the men there acting like she did be described by another of them as “feisty”?
- http://twitter.com/catherinebuca catherine buca
  
  I rankled at that, too. Patronising twerp.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  It’s better than spunky.
Ashley Yakeley

Democracy should be raucous.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  That is a statement that I closely associate with bullies.
http://twitter.com/ClaireWalter ClaireWalter

She looks eerily like Sarah Palin in that phoro.
http://www.eileengunn.com Gunn

Looks like group-sanctioned bullying to me. Do they do this to, um, male members as well? Maybe to male members who are in some way “different” from the majority?
- http://www.facebook.com/andy.oleary Andy O’Leary
  
  *sigh* Yes, people shout all the time in this sort of situation, regardless of the person’s gender and/or sexual orientation. Based on my familiarity with British politics, this isn’t some isolated anti-woman thing.
- Jeremy Mesiano-Crookston
  
  No, it’s fundamentally party-based. This isn’t a gender thing at all, but is firmly adversarial.
http://twitter.com/TheThinker1958 Fernando

all morons. They get paid so well, they are suppose to be the best representatives of a country, but they shout like ignoramouses. I think is all just an act. They will leave the Parliament, write bills that benefit the wealthy and life goes on.
- http://twitter.com/catherinebuca catherine buca
  
  Exactly. They are incompetent middle managers who get to sit in a fancy room and throw their own excrement around like crazed chimps every so often. Their constituents can’t relate to this kind of idiocy, they are so far removed from what the people they represent want, need and have to deal with, and they are very certainly not fit for office.
johnathan

I miss watching Tony Blair and Ian Duncan Smith go at it.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Tony Blair wants to be PM again. Be careful what you wish for.
  - johnathan
    
    He’d be more interesting than Ed Milliband.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      In the same way that war in Iraq and Afghanistan is more interesting than mowing the lawn?
      - johnathan
        
        Haha, ouch, okay you got me. I may have misspoken, and completely take your point. I don’t actually want Tony Blair to be PM and didn’t think my original comment would be taken as an endorsement of Labour policy. I really did enjoy the above mentioned going at it every Wednesday though. In high school I would watch Politically Incorrect and then flip over to C-SPAN and watch the PMQs. Imagine how laid in high school I got.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Tony Blair = nightmare fuel. The smarmy smile fails to hide the alien within.
      - Guest
        
        You know what’s also nightmare fuel? The eye. It could be jocular, menacing, friendly, or creepy. You just don’t know. That’s its power.
  - johnathan
    
    Also, I’m American, so I don’t really have a horse in that race.
Robert

Holy shit, it’s like Jerry fucking Springer. Really, MPs? Really?

Not that my US government is any better.
strangefriend

Well, at least Parliament has improved since William Pitt’s time (starting at 6:55 on this clip.)
http://youtu.be/REbSmutgyGg
http://twitter.com/chriscoreline chris coreline

Look at the jowly, entitled, upper class, landed, plutocratic noblemen… just look at them.