Thursday 16 July 2009

Debate on Afghanistan this afternoon

There's a debate on Afghanistan starting around 2pm-ish. I bumped into Roberta Blackman-Woods MP earlier, chair of the All-Party Group on Afghanistan. She's been to Afghanistan before, but this week was out there with Sir Richard Dannatt and his team. She'll be speaking in the debate but the defence whip tells me there are twenty or so speakers, and the big guns are out on the front benches - David Miliband opening, Bob Ainsworth closing for the Government, and William Hague and Liam Fox for the Tories, so backbench speeches are going to be tight for time. At the moment it's being advertised on the annunicator as an 8 minute limit on backbench speeches but what usually happens is that gets squeezed by long front-bench contributions and lots of interventions. I hope Roberta gets called early, and isn't one of those who gets cut down to a few minutes just before wind-ups start.

4 comments:

Man in the Street said...

I think Air Chief Marshal Sir Graham Eric Stirrup's (GCB, AFC, DSc, FRAeS, FCMI, RAF) opinion carries more weight than all the politicians put together.

Did you hear him speak this morning? All the hand wringing in Parliament won't change

It really is "wind-ups" in Westminster. You really are a lousy bunch and should be ashamed of yourselves.

Kerry said...

If Radio 4 and the BBC can refer to him as Jock Stirrup, then I think you're allowed to too.

Roadkill said...

OMG what's with all these letters after his name ?

What do they actually mean ?

By the way Man in the street , is that an arthritic hand or a Churchillian gesture?

force12 said...

Thanks Kerry.

Roadkill - Look them up if you are interested.