Order! Ordaaaar!
April 15, 2016 4:55 AM   Subscribe

The northern UK Member of Parliament, Dennis Skinner, attacked David Cameron in Prime Minister's Questions this week, and was thrown out of the chamber for refusing to take back the blistering epithet - Dodgy Dave.

This has won him some fans globally. He's been thrown out of the Commons at least ten times, and has a well-deserved reputation for insulting other parliamentarians.

He is rather unapologetic about the whole thing.
posted by Stark (28 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
- Leave Dave out of it! What has he done? You fucking retract that bit about Dodgy Dave!
- I won't retract that bit about your Dodgy fucking Dave.
- Insult Dodgy fucking Dave? That's going overboard, mate!

posted by lmfsilva at 5:16 AM on April 15, 2016 [4 favorites]


"All right, half of the government aren't crooks"
posted by acb at 5:24 AM on April 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


His finest work:

Half the members opposite are crooks!

Okay, I withdraw. Half the members opposite are not crooks.
posted by vbfg at 5:29 AM on April 15, 2016 [46 favorites]


I love- ORDER! Love the wa- I SAID ORDAAR! the way that he- ORDER! keeps interrupt- ORDER! interrupting himself. Order.

"I don't need help from a junior minister"
posted by leotrotsky at 5:59 AM on April 15, 2016 [11 favorites]


Skinner's a living national treasure.
posted by scruss at 6:06 AM on April 15, 2016


I wish our Congress had to sit directly across from each other like that, with John Conyers and Charlie Rangel giving Steve King and Pete Sessions the stink eye everyday.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:09 AM on April 15, 2016 [6 favorites]


He's not wrong.
posted by Kitteh at 6:20 AM on April 15, 2016


Cameron may be dodgy, but even Skinner has to recognize that he knows how to bring home the bacon.
posted by delfin at 6:23 AM on April 15, 2016


Cameron may be dodgy, but even Skinner has to recognize that he knows how to bring home the bacon.

It's what he does with the bacon when he gets it home that bothers me.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 6:28 AM on April 15, 2016 [30 favorites]


This is so awesome. And now I know that the Parliamentary banhammer is officially called "Standing Order No. 43." I am totally going to invoke that at dinner with my kids.
posted by The Bellman at 6:36 AM on April 15, 2016 [6 favorites]


Coming soon, Dennis The Movie (YT)
posted by quarsan at 6:49 AM on April 15, 2016


He is not wrong. And it's not just Dave. May wants to spy on us all, everything, all the time, and wants backdoors into encryption on devices (there was an FPP about this idea being floated in the USA recently, she ought to read it!. Osbourne has cut the amount of people working on large scale corporate tax evasion at HMRC; converted the useless FSA into the even more useless FCA; cut tax for the rich while cutting pip for the disabled (a policy he had to back track on); they have ran up huge amounts of PF2 (PFI renamed) debt; they have cut taxes for the rich and corporations... the list juts goes on and on, feel free to add your own "reasons to hate the tories part 7."

Even IDS resigned over their policies and his DWP rejigging has made life on the dole pretty much unbearable for anyone who has to go on the dole (over a million and a quarter people at present, and has never been below a million for a very long time.)

Yet Skinner gets chucked out for calling Posh Dave dodgy, when it is totally accurate: he ducked and dived when the question of what money his dad gave him and whether it was related to the MossFon fund, finally coming clean because he had no choice. His credibility is totally shot over this, what little he had anyway.

Related: BBC: Big Five European Countries Launch Tax Crackdown (another one where the top rated coments are worth reading - so much for "it will take ten years to sort things with the EU if we leave.")

More from the BBC: Fairness of Budget Under Scrutiny (again the comments (sorted by top rated) are good)

And Yet More: Is Cameron a Tax Avoider? (the top rated comments on this one- it is like tory HQ sent people to comment to make sure Dave looks good!!)
posted by marienbad at 7:17 AM on April 15, 2016 [5 favorites]


Notice that Cameron made damn sure they didn't touch the state pension. Without the support of old people the Tories would vanish tomorrow.
posted by Talez at 7:34 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


Clearly I know little about British Parliament, but is the PM's chin so weak that he can't handle a relatively minor insult? He should have stood up and answered, and insisted that Skinner be allowed to stay. Allowing your opposition to be thrown out is cowardly.
posted by Brocktoon at 7:42 AM on April 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


You've never actually met a Tory, have you?
posted by Talez at 7:46 AM on April 15, 2016 [8 favorites]


"That still leaves you a c*nt, though."
"Yeah, I noticed."
posted by praemunire at 8:12 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


Clearly I know little about British Parliament

It is unparliamentary language. In any case the proper term of abuse for the Prime Minister is "pigfucker", but it is not appropriate to use that term in Parliament. Because we have standards. Low standards, I grant you - but standards nonetheless.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 8:44 AM on April 15, 2016 [14 favorites]


> "I don't need help from a junior minister"

Centuries of public school formalized hierarchy and ritual humiliation went in to that sentence and the tone he used to say it.
posted by benito.strauss at 9:09 AM on April 15, 2016 [16 favorites]


Wikipedia has a great page on unparliamentary language.

New Zealand has the best examples by far:

Found unparliamentary:
idle vapourings of a mind diseased (1946)

his brains could revolve inside a peanut shell for a thousand years without touching the sides (1949)

Okay:
scuttles for his political funk hole (1974)
posted by Across the pale parabola of joy at 9:18 AM on April 15, 2016 [17 favorites]


his brains could revolve inside a peanut shell for a thousand years without touching the sides

Oh absolutely sublime. I need to start an absurdist lo-fi jazz combo so we can use it for an album title.
posted by saturday_morning at 10:21 AM on April 15, 2016 [3 favorites]


Nothing will ever beat Trudeau Sr's "fuddle duddle," sorry.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:22 AM on April 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


New Zealand has the best examples by far:

See also John Clarke's Parliamentary Broadcast.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 10:36 AM on April 15, 2016


Brocktoon: “Clearly I know little about British Parliament, but is the PM's chin so weak that he can't handle a relatively minor insult? He should have stood up and answered, and insisted that Skinner be allowed to stay. Allowing your opposition to be thrown out is cowardly.”

To be fair – I guess – Cameron has indeed stood in Parliament to respond to Dennis Skinner's "Dodgy Dave" thing before. His counter-insult was to rather limply refer to Dennis Skinner as "Jurassic Park."
posted by koeselitz at 11:03 AM on April 15, 2016


Ah, so this is why they're supposed to stand two sword lengths apart.
posted by Panjandrum at 11:26 AM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


Centuries of public school formalized hierarchy and ritual humiliation went in to that sentence and the tone he used to say it

While the cultural influence you speak of is clearly present, it's worth noting that John Bercow is the state-educated son of a taxi driver, of Romanian and English Jewish ancestry.
posted by howfar at 3:56 PM on April 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


John Bercow looks like Terry Jones playing an upper-class twit, so I can understand the mistake.
posted by enjoymoreradio at 7:04 PM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]




Our governments would work a lot better if they'd just come out and take the slap on the wrist for expressing ourselves "in the most unparlimentary language" manery possible.
posted by Hasteur at 1:04 PM on April 17, 2016


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