An MP was tonight rapped across the knuckles for using the 'f' word during a debate.
Labour's Tony Wright (Cannock Chase) was bemoaning the disintegration of modern society during a debate on the BBC and illustrated his argument with a vivid example.
He said: "I was told just a few days ago by someone no less than a bishop, and I apologise for putting it in this way but it's the only way I can do it, that the French now refer routinely to the English as 'les f***offs'".
Mr Wright's purple passage went unremarked on for several minutes until he finished his speech. But at that point, Deputy Speaker Sir Alan Haselhurst told MPs: "The fact that I missed one of the expressions used by the MP does not mean that there is open house for such words."
The next speaker in the debate, Tory Peter Bottomley (Worthing West), then prompted laughter with his opening comment: "I will try to avoid quoting a bishop". Always a wise move, in my book.
6 comments:
Unusually Hansard has printed the offending remark without censoring it. When Reg Race became the first MP in the modern era to use the f-word in the chamber in 1982, Hansard had it as "f***".
i thought 'les fuck offs' was originally a term used by the French for English deserters in the Napoleonic Wars?
But Blair seems to have got away with insulting the Welsh, according to the Beeb and a small item in the print edition of The Times today.
"He is alleged to have said "Fucking Welsh" repeatedly."
In Napoloenic times the crapauds referred to His Brittanic Majesty's loyal and successfully violent forces as "Les Goddamns".
Apparently the term was often uttered with a sense of awe inspired by fear of a nation that felt confident enough to routinely damn God.
you ought to read the Lords, there's loads of good swear words in there!
I seem to remember somebody closer to home using the F-word in a way likely to damage Anglo-Swedish relations the other day...
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