Friday, July 09, 2010
What Jacob Rees-Mogg did next
I cannot resist reproducing this blogpost by Tomos Livingstone in full. It is just priceless:
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the recently-elected Conservative MP for North East Somerset, arrived at Westminster with a reputation for being, well, a little old-fashioned.
Rees-Mogg, son of a former Times editor, famously stood in the solid Labour seat of Central Fife in 1997, where he attracted a good deal of press attention for taking his nanny with him on the campaign trail.
As he put it in a Mail on Sunday interview three years later: "I do wish you wouldn't keep going on about the nanny [...] If I'd had a valet, you'd think it was perfectly normal."
I'm sure Mr Rees-Mogg is doing his best to shake off this reputation for living in the past. But he hasn't done his cause much good with his first parliamentary written question to the Wales Office (the first of many, one hopes).
The MP enquires:
Whether her Department has a) commissioned and b) undertaken any research on the effect of Welsh Development Agency grants on the movement of jobs from i) England and ii) North-East Somerset to Wales; and if she will make a statement
Oh dear. As Wales Office Minister David Jones points out in his reply, the WDA was actually wound up in April 2006.
Still, for a man once described as "the last young British male to live as though he is in the 19th century", being four years out of date probably counts as progress.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the recently-elected Conservative MP for North East Somerset, arrived at Westminster with a reputation for being, well, a little old-fashioned.
Rees-Mogg, son of a former Times editor, famously stood in the solid Labour seat of Central Fife in 1997, where he attracted a good deal of press attention for taking his nanny with him on the campaign trail.
As he put it in a Mail on Sunday interview three years later: "I do wish you wouldn't keep going on about the nanny [...] If I'd had a valet, you'd think it was perfectly normal."
I'm sure Mr Rees-Mogg is doing his best to shake off this reputation for living in the past. But he hasn't done his cause much good with his first parliamentary written question to the Wales Office (the first of many, one hopes).
The MP enquires:
Whether her Department has a) commissioned and b) undertaken any research on the effect of Welsh Development Agency grants on the movement of jobs from i) England and ii) North-East Somerset to Wales; and if she will make a statement
Oh dear. As Wales Office Minister David Jones points out in his reply, the WDA was actually wound up in April 2006.
Still, for a man once described as "the last young British male to live as though he is in the 19th century", being four years out of date probably counts as progress.
Comments:
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Somebody should inform him that it's no longer possible to claiim on MP expenses for a nanny or valet. "Those days r long gone."
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