While MPs are keen to discuss food chain dangers, they are wilfully indifferent to Britain's most feral beast, the 24/7 media
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MPs, as well as the Daily Mail, are in a sizzle over killer sausages. Photograph: Alamy
Halfway through his monthly question time session, the cabinet's rightwing cheerleader, Owen Paterson, told MPs that police in 23 countries are closing in on the criminal conspiracy that has been foisting fraudulent products on the unsuspecting British public. From the robust tone of his condemnation of these rascals it was immediately clear that the environment secretary was not talking about bankers.
In fact it was the horsemeat racket which was again exercising MPs and ministers, both on the grounds of food hygiene and of cruelty to our four-legged friends. It offends us, but not the French to whom our entire food chain is a criminal conspiracy. As with flood prevention, which also took up a lot of time, the concern was understandable. Yet surely the Commons was in danger of missing the latest media news cycle?
Only hours earlier the Daily Mail had revealed that one in 30 of us may die prematurely, not because of eating steak cheval or being operated on by the NHS chief, Sir David Nicholson, but because we eat too much processed meat. Yes, killer sausages are stalking the land, often killing in tandem with a seemingly harmless accomplice, killer bacon! You read it first in the Mail, possibly within inches of the silent killer on your breakfast plate.
Over the course of an hour MPs conjured up a terrifying world in which all sorts of animals threaten us poor humans. There were dangerous rough dogs and angry posh dogs, the latter sold by backstreet puppy breeders (some in the Republic of Ireland, added the DUP's Jim Shannon helpfully). There were bats which crap in churches and ruin their ancient fabric, according to churchy Sir Tony Baldry.
And obviously there were dead horses, lacking proper horse passports and stuffed with a horse aspirin called bute, which are contaminating our burgers, fish fingers, chicken nuggets, our chocolates even. Only the humble bee, a victim of pesticides said Green MP Caroline Lucas, and discarded North Sea fish were not accused of trying to do us down, though dead bees will get their own back in the end.
Yet MPs seemed willfully indifferent to Britain's most feral beast, the 24/7 media. Studies by the Hugh Grant Institute have shown that two in 30 Brits face higher risks of strokes or cardiac arrest by reading the Mail, but MPs rarely dare say so. Of the Mail's killer-meat front page they spoke not a word of condemnation to feed the day's controversy. Can it be that sausages also have powerful friends at the Met, that the bacon barons have written a sizzling cheque to party HQ? Mad sausage disease is spiralling out of control.
In the circumstances MPs kept their spirits up by picking on one brute who can't hurt them any more: Richard III. Churchy Sir Tony, who speaks on CoE matters, later revealed that Leicester University, which dug up the late monarch long after his car park ticket had expired, has decided to rebury him at Leicester Cathedral whose nearest car park is at the Holiday Inn.
Cue for uproar! Hugh Bayley, who happens to be MP for downtown York claimed that Richard's desire ("expressed in his lifetime") had been to be buried below the NCP at York. Helen Goodman, MP for Bishop Auckland, insisted that nearby Barnard Castle ("where he lived happily for many years") would be the obvious place to park him. Edward Leigh, a Tory Catholic, pointed out that Tricky Dicky "did live and die a Catholic" so there should be a Catholic element to whatever car park interment was finally agreed.
Superficial stuff, all of it. The place for the king's twisted bones is St Bride's, the parish church of Fleet Street. Why? What could be a more appropriate resting place for the victim of the greatest spin operation in English history?
Richard was a perfectly run-of-the-mill tyrant by New Labour standards. Yet on the instructions of the Tudor establishment and the mainstream corporate media, ambitious provincial hack Bill Shakespeare had blackened his name for ever, probably with CIA funding. When Bill knifed someone they stayed knifed. Not even the Mail can always say that.