The price of S&M services has ‘gone through the roof’ in recent years, a cross-party Parliamentary committee has found. The 128-strong Personal Services Committee has blamed the steep rise in the large number of companies encouraging punters to make spurious personal injury claims.

‘The names and details of MPs, sorry, customers are being sold on to unscrupulous private insurance firms, for up to £500 a time,’ explained Tom Elkington, the chair of the committee. ‘Everybody in the industry knows that that they are taking these backhanders; a masked dominatrix who gave evidence to the committee described it to us as the S&M industry’s ‘dirty little secret.’ Well, one of them, anyway.’

‘The cost of an evening’s humiliation has doubled in the last few years,’ remarked one right honourable anonymous punter MP. ‘And the second I get home afterwards, there’s always a call from some shifty insurance company or other asking me if I have suffered any whiplash injuries. What damn fool kind of question is that? Of course I have; that’s what I’ve just paid for.’

The committee is pushing for Parliament to act as quickly as possible. ‘We believe it’s time for strict new controls to be introduced into the S&M industry,’ declared Mr Elkington. ‘Oh, and they need to stop selling customers’ personal data to private insurance companies as well.’

The Association of British Insurers has agreed that radical reform was desirable. ‘We would like to act more decisively on this one,’ explained a spokesman. ‘but unfortunately our hands are tied. Hold on, I’ll rephrase that.’

‘There are various options for voting on the voting method,’ explained Nick Clegg. ‘First Past the Post, Alternative Vote, Best of Three, Consult the I Ching, A Throw of the Dice, Paper Scissors Stone and WGAF.’

MPs will be offered a simple yes/no vote for each method, indicating preference by a tick or cross in the relevant box. However, many are unsure whether a cross in the No box means ‘Yes, I’m voting No’, or ‘No, I don’t want No as the answer, so Yes’. There was, however, a consensus that two ticks cancel each other out and two crosses mean ‘what was the question again?’

The debate is expected to go on until all permutations have been exhausted or the nation runs out of pens, whichever comes first.

“Although we did not prevail over the Tories, I will continue to serve the miserable people of Kirkcaldy,” Brown pledged at a depressing meeting in his drab, wintry constituency. “As the former prime minister, it now falls to me to play my part in Labour’s great work of renewal: to sit on the backbenches, glowering and bitching about the new leadership, and I will give this task every ounce of energy I have left, which admittedly isn’t much.”

Brown said he would not endorse any candidate in the coming leadership election, insisting that “whoever wins will have my unswerving contempt.” As he drove away, he was heard on microphone adding “especially if it’s that gurning, banana-wielding bastard Miliband. Where’s Sue?”

No.10 claim it was written in Comic Sans

The Queen has slammed the quality of the handwritten speech that the Prime Minister asked her to deliver at yesterday’s State Opening of Parliament.

‘It was illegible and incoherent, like he’d just dashed it orf,’ fumed the monarch. ‘And he spelt one’s name wrong. Who’s ever heard of the name Widsnor? And why he kept addressing one as Barbara is a mystery.’

However, Gordon Brown has vehemently denied accusations that the Queen’s Speech was full of ‘errors of judgement’, and insists that someone in the royal household must have tampered with the speech.  ‘We have absolutely no plans to introduce the Banning Modern Architecture Bill or the No Monarchs Allowed to Reign for More than Fifty Years Bill.’ We can’t imagine who must have been adding their own ideas…’

‘It’s absurd that they get so long off,’ said Alan Duncan’s father today.  ‘It’s not even August but already it seems like weeks ago that the Speaker let them take games in on the last day of term.  All Alan’s doing is sitting around the house watching repeats on the Parliament Channel and getting under my feet.  I keep telling him to go and get a job, but he just laughs at me.’

Members of the public have also reported concern at the return of MPs to their constituencies.  ‘The problem is the lack of facilities which means they’ve got nothing to do,’ said one of Ann Widdecombe’s constituents today.  ‘You see them hanging around on street corners, and it’s scary.  All you’ve got to do is look at them in the wrong way and they’ll have you there for hours going on about how they shouldn’t all be tarred with the same brush.  The community is living in fear.’

But for some MPs’ parents the summer holidays isn’t all bad news. Tony McNulty’s mum and dad are said to be delighted that recess will allow their son to move out and return to the North London constituency home which he can’t get to when Parliament is sitting due to the prohibitive commute.  And Alistair Darling’s parents have wasted no time in packing him off to Camp Westminster for the summer in the hope that some extra tuition will mean he isn’t held back a few years come the next election.  Those close to Gordon Brown have suggested he may also be joining his Chancellor following his embarrassing showing at sports day when he couldn’t even win the sack race.

However, for the majority of parents dreading being stuck at home with their MP all summer, there was some further bad news today as the Chief Medical Officer admitted that it may be necessary to keep Parliament closed come October to curb the spread of swine flu.  ‘It’s a last resort, but we may need to tell Ministers to stay at home if we’re to have any hope of managing this virus.  In fact, it’s probably also best if they avoid people and public places,’ he added, ‘at least until we can develop a vaccine.’

(Hat-tip to Stan Laurel)

Only upon receiving the bill will they reveal their secret, telling the Maître d’ that they are in fact flat-broke, out of work and is their any chance of ‘gissing them a job?’  Producers are also said to be working on a celebrity edition, where former reality TV stars will be doing the same in Bond Street.  The series is to be narrated by Bernard Hill.

Parliament is to create its first Register of Members’ sexual interests as an official record of MPs’ erotic preferences, sexual persuasion and extra-marital relationships.

The latest extension of the Freedom of Information act follows a number of scandals in which a politician’s public stance has clearly conflicted with the approach taken in their private lives. It is hoped that MPs’ moral positions on sexual matters will be more consistent if a list is published detailing their visits to Spearmint Rhino or hours spent on hardcore pornographic websites; and so public respect for their elected representatives will be restored.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards explained how the idea had come about; ‘The Government had just lost a big vote on the Prostitution in Public Places Bill when someone blurted out: “It’s no wonder Lanky Stephens voted against it; he’s a rampant kerb-crawler with a penchant for sado-masochism and bondage.”’ Further casual enquiries revealed that a number of the most outspoken moralists in the House of Commons who made a great show of removing prostitutes cards from Westminster telephone boxes, subsequently rang those very same numbers later in the evening.

Pressure for the register of sexual interests has come mainly from the tabloid press, who claim that such a register is ‘a matter of moral urgency’ and not at all a quick way to get loads of easy copy. But the commissioner claims that as well as stamping out conflicts of interest, the new register might spell the end for salacious tabloid headlines. ‘The next time a Lib Dem MP is snapped by a photographer from The Sun on Clapham Common with a 19 year-old call-boy called Leroy, it’ll take the wind right out of the story! He can just say I told you about this; check the register; under ‘D’ for ‘domination’.’

Members of Parliament will list their sexual activities on a special form, using a separate piece of paper if necessary. Ann Widdecombe was the first MP to enter the register. To great relief all round, her list of sexual interests simply said ‘None’.

prbunny

As news of the searing critique swept through the House of Commons, tearful MPs came out of their offices seeking comfort; Labour and Conservatives hugging one another in the corridors, sharing hankies and exchanging a few re-assuring words that might begin to rebuild their shattered confidence.

Radio phone-in regular Bob Collier was unrepentant; ‘One lot says one thing, and then the other lot says something else, I mean, why can’t they just get together and sort it all out?’ The invective was more than members of Parliament could bear, as the Speaker reported to the P.M. that they were facing mass resignations at Westminster. M.P.s simply decided there was no point in carrying on following the damning analysis that had been broadcast live on LBC.

‘It’s just not fair…’ wept veteran Liberal Democrat Menzies Campbell; ‘After all the hours we have put in, the weekend surgeries, the late-night debates, sorting out constituent problems, sitting on committees, scrutinizing legislation, writing letters… and now then a member of the public calls us “a bloomin waste of space…” I can’t go on.’

After group counselling sessions from motivation and self-confidence coaches, the Members of Parliament finally decided to hit back at their fiercest critic. This afternoon MPs debated an emergency motion entitled ‘Is Bob Collier a crap security guard or what?’ Unfortunately the debate rapidly descended into petty political point scoring, with MPs failing to get together and sort it all out and generally demonstrating that they are in fact, all as bad as each other.