London Banter - View Single Post

Acrosticus · February 20th 04, 05:15 PM posted to uk.transport.london

From: "Billy"
Date: 20/02/2004 13:10 GMT Standard Time

My Lords,Ladies and Gentlemen...Pray silence for the following motion
submitted to the Commons on 21st Jan 2004.
"That this house disagrees with the decision of the Mayor of London to
phase out this year virtually all of the 500 or so Routemaster buses
currently in service in Central London ; notes that the entire fleet has
quite recently been refurbished,not least to conform with modern emissions
standards,and that some buses have been further internally refurbished in
recent months;further notes the strong popularity of Routemasters with
Members of the Public; and calls on the Mayor to postpone plans to withdraw
these popular,perfectly servicable buses.

Motion in the name of : Norman Baker.

Roy Beggs. Lynsey Hoyle. Rob Marris
David Burnside. Greg Pope. Andrew Rossindell
Tony Coleman. Bob Spink. Tom Brake.
Gerry Tonge. Gregory Campbell. Peter Bottomley. Mrs Ann Cryer. Vincent
Cable. Paul Keetch.
Brian Cotter. Paul Marsden. Alan Simpson. Stephen Pound. Simon Thomas. Bob
Russell. Andrew Stunnell. Paul Tyler.

Order...Order....Move down along the Bus now please......Ding Ding...!!

This will certainly not be popular with TfL senior management,who after all
are completely in tune with the requirements of their Customers...?

Presumably an "Early Day Motion", which doesn't mean it will be debated early
in the morning, but simply that those signing it wish it to be debated at an
early date. The success rate of these kind of motions in bringing about changes
of any kind is so small as to be invisible, since most are never debated at
all.

At which point Mr Speaker adjusts the fare stage on his ticket machine and
announces: "Move onto further business now please honourable and right
honourable members, there's another early day motion right behind ...
ding,ding!"

Oh, and why couldn't Mr Bottomley persuade his missus to sign up with him on
this one? I see his name's there on its own. A bit of domestic disharmony
perhaps ("News of the Screws" hacks leave the press gallery in a panic to file
the story first).