This may seem a peculiar thing to say after weeks of anger from the public and self-laceration among MPs, but I’m not talking about the fall-out from the expenses scandal.
I was in Westminster for the first time in ages the other day to attend a meeting about Bangladesh in the Lords. I can’t remember the number of the committee room now and I could certainly never locate it again. The Commons (or was it Lords?) staff were very helpful in helping me find it, although stricltly speaking they allowed me down a stretch of corrridor and down a staircase that was out-of-bounds. At the end of it I felt like a little boy on my first day at school. This sort of thing often happens to me when I venture into parliament. Why is it, for instance, that whenever I show a group of people round the place I always end up outside Ian Paisley’s office?
The whole Palace of Westminster is designed to make you feel alienated.
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