Called to the bar of the House

There's been a bit of a kerfuffle this week after the Labour MP for Falkirk, Eric Joyce, allegedly headbutted a Tory MP in a bar at the House of Commons.  Joyce has been arrested and charged with common assault and will appear before magistrates next month (as the incident took place in the Palace of Westminster, I'm not sure why he can't invoke parliamentary privilege and insist on trial by the House of Commons sitting as the High Court of Parliament and, if convicted, imprisonment in the Clock Tower cell reserved for MP's).

Others have rightly pointed out the hypocrisy of MP's who speak in Commons debates about cheap alcohol, extended opening hours and binge drinking before repairing to one of Parliament's ever open bars to drink heavily subsidised beer late into the night.  But unlike those who think MP's should pay more for their beer and have last orders called on them, I think we should level up, reducing the price of beer by cutting, or ideally abolishing, the tax and duty on it and allowing pubs to set their opening hours (as they could before the so-called Liberal Lloyd George introduced restricted hours in World War I). Any problems could then be dealt with by local licensing authorities. And it might also be an idea for other workplaces to introduce subsidised bars for their staff.

Why we need more MP's

A lot of the coverage of the plan to equalise the size of parliamentary constituencies has focused on the redrawing of boundaries producing bizarre results, the rebranding of parts of Salford as Manchester Central for example, but the more important point is the reduction in the number of MP's.

By reducing the number of MP's from 650 to 600, the government claims it is "making politics cheaper". That the redrawn boundaries will favour the Tories is clear and the Lib Dems must now be rueing their decision to support a plan that looks likely to see them mown down in even greater numbers than they would have been at the next election in return for a referendum on the voting system in which they were beaten into the ground by their coalition partners.

The principle of equal constituencies is of course obvious which is why the Chartists included it in their demands in 1838, along with full adult (albeit male) suffrage, secret ballots, payment of MP's and annual Parliaments (so that Cameron and Clegg would be facing the voters again this year).

If we want to make MP's more accountable, we should have more of them, introduce the right of constituents to replace them at any time by triggering a by-election and annual Parliaments and restrict their wages to that of an average worker.