Wednesday
The fashion nowadays seems to be to appoint prop forwards to conduct inquiries. Fran Cotton is to consider whether or not Market Harborough’s most famous son, Martin Johnson, should be allowed to stay in charge of the England rugby XV, while Gareth Chilcott is currently working on his report on the United Kingdom’s role in the Iraq War. In the latter case at least, I think this is an excellent idea – particularly after Len Hutton’s bosh shot at investigating the death of Dr David Kelly.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West, 1906-10.
Previously on Lord Bonkers' Diary
1 comment:
Your Lordship,
Of course the establishment would never leave serious business to the backs - but prior to the fashion for props it was Locks that used to take on the role of inquiry Lead.
Obviously a Lion cap was an additional minimal requirement.
Stack Stevens (Breague's greatest son) of course lead a series of inquiries into HMG collusion with various unpleasant Queen- botherers in NI and still had time to look into various shenanigans in the round ball game.
His mate in NZ '71 Willie John fooled no one when he added an extra 'a' to his name when he wrote UNESCO's ground breaking 'Many Voices One World'. Clearly the experience of leading such a motley collection of humanity as John Taylor (why an Australian from Woolongong was allowed to play for the Lions has never been fully explained) , John Spencer (although what the hell they thought taking a snooker player to NZ would achieve remains the great unanswered question of the 20th century)and Alan Old (although many people thought his batting would not suit the the pitches of South Africa and thought the medium paced trundlers of his brother Chris would be more useful) was paramount.
The report of course ran to two letters - 99.
In fact the only Lock on the Lions tours of '71 & '74 not to be tasked to help HMG out of a spot of bother was Gordon Brown - no one knows what happened to the 'Broon frae Troon' between his retirement in 1976 and his untimely death in 2001 - although rumors occasionally surface of him going undercover with a mission to destroy the Labour Party.
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