Sketchup
A selection of lines from parliamentary sketch-writers.
Lord Turner appeared in front of the Treasury Select Committee to discuss how banks and bankers can be controlled in future to prevent another financial crisis. unconvinced, or simply confused, by the Financial Service Authority chief's answers:
"Lord Turner had a number of solutions. The ones any normal ignoramus could understand were silly, and so I assumed - perhaps unfairly - were the ones we couldn't.
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"To stop a boom while it was still booming he was recommending a 'macroprudential committee' on which he had placed 'maverick economists' in order to 'institutionalise intellectual challenge'. That's like sending missionaries into the Big Feast armed only with the New Testament printed on sugar paper."
At Foreign Office questions, as the debate turned to the issue of Yemen, Labour MP Keith Vaz asked David Miliband if he would consider visiting the country with his US counterpart Hillary Clinton. that, instead of being embarrassed by the insinuations about the pair's relationship after Mrs Clinton called Mr Miliband "vibrant and attractive", he positively played on it:
"You might think Mr Miliband would try to shrug off this erotic speculation and give a serious answer. Not. 'Needless to say,' he purred, 'I have thought of many places for a joint visit with the secretary of state...'"
Away from Westminster, Kenneth Clarke was speaking at an event in Canary Wharf, home to many of the City's bankers. that if the Tories' plan was to present him as an experienced antidote to Cameron and Osborne, who were also there, it did the trick:
"Mr Osborne was so pale he was almost green. Mr Cameron's hair glistened."
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"[Mr Clarke's] own hair cut, scraped and pineapple spiky at the back, was old-fashioned. He was a disorganised figure, even almost doddery as he stumbled over words, his enunciation foggy, the vowels moving towards us with all the despatch of smoke rings."
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