April Fool’s humour bypass

Originally posted on 01/04/09

A PARLIAMENTARY SKETCH Common’s officials were scurrying around trying to be helpful on the eve of April Fool’s Day.??I had prepared the following text for a Parliamentary Motion which I hoped would be ‘in order’ to be published on the Order Paper the following morning:

RETURN OF THE STONEHENGE MEGALITHS FROM GREECE

That this House is euphoric about the news of the discovery of many of the missing megaliths from Stonehenge in a remote and mountainous area of the Peloponnese Peninsula in Greece to where they were apparently taken to build an amphitheatre; considers this to be the single most important discovery in British archaeology for centuries, yet is astounded at the brazen effrontery of the Greek authorities who have scandalously refused their return to Britain where they rightly belong; believes the Greeks have attempted to defend their decision with the shameless and preposterous poppycock conventionally deployed by an ancient colonial power; calls on the Greeks to put right the wrongs of their forebears during that shameful period of ancient Greek imperial history; and asks HM Government, on the day of the announcement of this discovery (April 1st 2009), to answer the extraordinary Greek claim that there is no difference between this and the holding by the British Museum of the Parthenon Marbles. House rules require these Motions to ‘have a basis in reality’, which I thought should discount most of the proceedings of Parliament.??The reality that the Motion had a not so subtle political point – whether you agree or not – was immaterial.??So this April Fool will have to rejoin the Parliamentary ‘reality’ show.

Andrew George MP 1st April 2009