KEY POINTS:
Parliament to become a satire-free zone - "It's our job to make us look silly," MPs tell media - news item.
And rightly so, it must be said. Those bloomin' satirists have been ruling the roost - and roasting the rulers - for far too long. An anti-smirking bill to protect our Glorias leaders from even the lightest of cracks is precisely the very thing this country needs right now.
Oh, sure, there'll be those who insist that a little nostrilated elevacation ...
What!?!? - A Curious Bystander
Getting up their nose - Self
... is precisely what our Gobs on Olympus most richly deserve. But such sour and shrivelled souls need to think again. It's incumbent on all of us to see things from a politician's poyn tov vu, as a new police recruit might say.
Put yourself in their shoes (even if you can't afford them) for a moment. Imagine how unhappy you'd be if you suddenly became a knobject of ricidule - gosh, it's that police recruit again!
Fact is, you'd be devastated. The indignity of the experience would make all the free flights, free phones, cushy super schemes and being able to get your hands on election slush funds you can then spend illegally seem like nothing more than meaningless baubles of blighted office.
Reputation is a pearl beyond price and if a little censorship is what's required to maintain its lustre, then a little censorship is what we must have. This is a democracy, after all.
And parliament is our servants' workplace. So, to employ an Upstairs Downstairs metaphor, Outer Roa's own Mrs Bridges, not to mention the political equivalent of that Scots bloke who played the butler, are actually entitled to make a few rules about its operation.
Particularly if those rules mean those of us upstairs in the parlour of national affairs remain blissfully unaware of what's really going on!
Which will only happen if it's made inflexibly clear that no sneaky little snap-happy shutterbugger can turn any of our political servants from icon to Nikon through the publication of tittle-tattle, tell-tale tele-photos.
Of an MP oiling their broomstick, for example. Or reading a magazine. Or having a snooze!
Because it would be pointless protesting that Sue Bedford was speaking at the time and there's no better sedative in all of Christendom. Or that you'd happily give 16-year-olds the vote on the sole condition that they were the only people obliged to listen to her.
Vuh grate unwoshed (thank you, constable) wouldn't accept either explanation. They'd just stand around and hoot derisively, "Dya see ol so-an-so havin a kip at the taxpayers' expense?"
Oh, the indignity! The shame!
No wonder the poor dears want some new relegations (Good heavens! He's been made commissioner) preventing still images of a disparaging nature reaching the public domain.
Especially when they "may not be actually representative" according to Leader of the House, Michael Cullen, who helpfully showed journalists what he meant by raising two fingers. Publishing a still photograph of this, he explained, could allow reporters to say, "I was showing the fingers. Which I wasn't actually."
Well, maybe so, sir, but if you were, good luck to you. It's a gesture many of us - clutching letters from our banks with news of increased interest rates - are making right now and there's no reason why you shouldn't join the club, Squire!
Sadly, the Fourth Estate has been predictably unsympathetic to such concerns. Even the noble Harold, normally a pillar of rectitude, published a half-page of photos on Wednesday revealing several of our most humble servants in silly hats, silly poses, tutus and handcuffs.
Stand up the boy who said they'd look best in the lot!
And another well-known paper - which shall remain nameless, freedom of the press never having extended to publicising the opposition - actually went so far as to publish a picture of Tariana Turia asleep in the house.
Now, some say the world would be a better place if the good lady spent a lot more time in the arms of Morpheus but they won't be able to if these new rules come in. Well, more precisely, they won't be able to publish pictures of the dozing diva.
Or David Benson-Pope giving his eyeballs rather than his tennis balls a rest. Or Ron Mark doing a spot of digital communication. Anything other than photographs of MPs speaking intelligently or listening intently will be strictly verboeten.
"I think you're taking yourself too seriously," Dr Cullen told concerned journalists, clearly unaware they could level the same criticism at him.
Except that he's right. Any parliament where no-one accepts responsibility for the murder of a child in a prison van, where a Minister of Arts and Culture can forge paintings and feel no compulsion to offer their resignation, where a party's traitors can apparently prosper by leaking emails or thieves avoid any prosecution for stealing them, where retrospective legislation can make the illegal legal overnight, where ministerial standards are so impeccable they warrant a court case, and where the enthusiasm with which smaller parties hop from one coalition bed to another would make a sex worker blush most certainly does not deserve to be treated as a joke.
It deserves to be treated seriously!
