First, the hilarious bit...
Six-year drinking ban for MPs when they move out in 2020
MPs are to move out of the Palace of Westminster for the first time since the building was bombed by the Nazis, The Times has learnt.
In an attempt to prevent the 19th-century Gothic building from disintegrating beyond repair, MPs will be relocated to the Department of Health offices in Whitehall while a multibillion-pound refurbishment begins in 2020.
...The decision is likely to cause dismay among many MPs because their new temporary home, Richmond House, is held under an Islamic bond scheme and forbids the sale of alcohol.
Oh, my aching sides! After years of taxing drinkers to the hilt and closing thousands of pubs with their illiberal and idiotic legislation, politicians are finally getting a taste of their own (preventive) medicine.
Bye, bye taxpayer-subsidised alcohol! Hello, Islamic teetotalism! Sarah Wollaston must be rubbing her hands in glee.
Don't worry, MPs. It's for your own good. After all, there's 'no safe level of alcohol', is there?
Once I'd stopped belly-laughing, I read the rest of the article and this is where it gets appalling. It seems that the idea of drinking in normal pubs and paying normal prices is too much for the servants of the people to bear.
MPs did consider nationalising the Red Lion pub, which sits between parliament and Richmond House. Cordoning off the watering hole from the public would have allowed politicians banned from buying alcohol to drink in private next door to their offices.
It is thought that nationalising the pub would have cut the price of a pint by £1 to match the rate in the Palace of Westminster grounds.
The Red Lion is fine little pub with which I am very familiar. Fortunately, its owners have refused to sell, but the fact that MPs could even consider using taxpayers' money to nationalise a popular boozer so that they can avoid their own extortionate alcohol duty and keep the rest of us out tells you everything you need to know about the political class.
Do they actually want us to hang them from the lamp-posts?
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