Betty Williams you grass!

What is it with our MPs? They are happy to impose laws on the rest of us, but seem to think that they are above actually abiding by them themselves. Take the smoking ban. I think you know where this is going... the 11.05 from Paddington to Plymouth last Friday morning to be precise. Good old Charles Kennedy - or “chat show Charlie” - was caught red handed having a cigarette on the First Great Western service. When I first heard this I thought poor guy - but good on him. OK, I know he shouldn’t be smoking on a train, but I like the idea of having a few schoolboy pranksters in our Parliament. If it's not booze it's fags with Charlie Zammo and between them they have pretty much ended his credible political career, which is a shame. My respect was gone, however, when he just couldn't be straight about it. It is claimed that Zammo told officers that he believed he was not breaching any "no smoking" rules because he was blowing the smoke out of the window! Pull the other one! Why didn't you just say you were caught red handed and get on with it instead of embarking on the worst use of a technicality to lie your way out of something since Bill Clinton claimed he "did not have sexual relations with that woman"?

Anyway, Charlie, all is forgiven - though my sympathy runs dry given that you voted for the ban in the first place! But you aren't the only one flouting the ban. Last Thursday, the House of Commons was told that some MPs were not obeying the new smoking ban at Westminster. Betty Williams, Labour MP for Conwy, told Harriet Harman, Labour's deputy leader and the Commons Leader, that some people were flouting the rules by smoking in the lavatories. Betty Williams you grass! The Commons becomes more like the school playground by the day! No doubt Boris will be caught behind the bikeshed with a female backbencher sooner or later.