Staffers coming out of Westminster Tube Station yesterday were shocked to see Parliament Square swarming with people in protective chemical suits.
One Staffer told Recess Monkey, “I thought that was it, we’d finally been gassed.” A little tear of relief trickled down her cheek when she found out it was just the result of a minor road accident between a swimming pool supplies van and a Sky News journalist.
Recess Monkey
w4mp@parliament.uk
Patricia Beveridge is due to retire in April after 15 years working in the Members’ Tea Room. Although MPs will no doubt wish to make their appreciation felt in their own way, Recess Monkey is more interested in the appropriateness of her name to the task she has performed for the past fifteen years. A person with an appropriate name has what could be described as an aptonym. But who else in the Palace has an aptonym? Is Eric Pickles engaging in culinary habits at the weekends? And then Ilford South MP Mike Gapes - does he or doesn’t he? Recess Monkey did once know a Researcher with the surname Lush but he’s not sure that is at all relevant to the role of a Parliamentary staffer. Please send more Parliamentary aptonyms to Recess Monkey at w4mp@parliament.uk.
Recess Monkey
w4mp@parliament.uk
A young intern was recently seen entering a lift on a Friday at the same time as an MP. Although it was a Friday, this intern had taken the idea of dress down friday to new lows. The following dialogue between the MP and the intern ensued.
MP: (jovially) I know it’s a Friday, but shouldn’t you be in your suit?
Intern: Yeah, it’s a Friday. Shouldn’t you be in your constituency?
MP: (not jovial anymore)
Recess Monkey
w4mp@parliament.uk
Dave Tinline, Researcher to MP Ben Chapman, is widely regarded as one of the Palace’s fittest Researchers. Last year he and his mates ran up and down three mountains in one day - I’m not sure why but I was impressed.
This outstandingly fit Researcher plans to run the London Marathon this year in aid of The British Lung Foundation. So far he has raised in the region of £2,000 and several Recess Monkeys have contributed financially in lieu of actual physical exertion.
Please contribute to Dave’s success via his website.
Recess Monkey
w4mp@parliament.uk
There is tragedy at the heart of the British political system. Incontrovertable evidence has come to light that parliamentary staffers are so underpaid and overworked that they are being forced to forage for food wherever they can find it.
Nothing else can explain the disappearances from the lounge areas of Portcullis House of copies of daily newspapers. We can dismiss at once the notion that people are stealing them. Upstanding and lawabiding citizens would never do such a thing, and the morals of parliamentary assistants’ are above reproach.
No, what we are seeing is the result of mass starvation. Researchers are being forced to consume whole copies of the Guardian and the Independent simply in order to keep body and soul together. Sometimes a paper is found with small parts removed, telling the sad story of a researcher desperately trying to stave off starvation by reading the Morning Star, only to find that his empty stomach compels him mercilesly to tear of a piece of the newspaper he is reading and gobble it up.
That is why I am setting up the Portcullis House Famine Fund. Please give generously.
Ben
Portcullis House Recess Monkey
Welcome to our new weblog, where you’ll find the hottest information about what is really going on in the Westminster jungle and out there in the forest canopy of the constituency offices.
Although some of have been seen in the vicinity of the astonishingly successful Working 4 an MP website, at http://www.w4mp.org, this blog is not part of that site and the stuff you’ll find here does not reflect any official position of anyone in any way. In fact, the people behind w4mp.org want it to be known that they wash their hands of this site completely and utterly. Oh yes.
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