June 12, 2008

Latinitaster, noun
A petty scholar of Latin

"And what happened next?"

"Well, the fat grey one-eyed man from Scotland who no one liked and no one voted for decided - completely against the advice of the security services, who one would imagine are probably those best served on such matters - to throw out the ancient British right of habeas corpus just to save his political skin."

"Sort of, well, a revolting stitched-up under-the-counter deal with the Northern Irish 'Democratic' Unionists you mean?"

"Precisely. Or as Westminster sketch writer Quentin Letts put it so very eloquently this very morning:

'As a whimpering mongrel will sometimes drag itself home from a hit-and-run accident, two rear legs reduced to bleeding paddles, so has this Government survived. But the damage is dire. We are left with an unworkable, wicked law and a legislature no longer worth the name.

'Hundreds of good British soldiers died saving Northern Irish Unionism over the past three decades. Nows its MPs return the compliment by killing Magna Carta.

'What a crew that claims to govern us. The only people showing any enthusiasm for the Government's Bill were members of the Government themselves - the jobsworths and the spineless amoeba of our public life.'

"It is grotesque, young Nipper. So much so that even the slavishly pro-Labour Daily Mirror described it as Brown's 'shabby deal to save his own skin'."

"Ashamed to be British?"

"British? You are joking. We're all Scottish now, bonny lad."