Parliament has been dissolved. Its dissolution was announced this morning. This is probably a good thing as it was dissolute and the country is not solvent. Parliament can therefore pass no more resolutions to provide solutions to the unsolvable, insoluble probelms of national insolvency.All of which is because solvere meant loosen. For some reason, when people talk of parliament dissolving I think of the Thames flooding, or maybe an acid bath.
My favourite line about parliament is in Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies and describes the Minister for Transport, Lord Metroland:
Besides, all this statesmanship and foreign policy had always bored him. In his years in the Commons he had always liked a good scrap, and often thought wistfully of those orgies of competitive dissimulation in which he had risen to eminence.
There's something lovely about "competitive dissimulation", and, as the preacher says, there is nothing new under the sun.
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Rinse you mouth out for having mentioned the dreaded word Parliament...
ReplyDeleteoh, darling dogberry, please remove the stray apostrophe in the first sentence. it is upsetting me.
ReplyDeleteHow right you were. I feel suitably chastened. I fear I type faster than I can think (three words a minute).
ReplyDeleteConsider yourself further chastened. It's solvere, not solvare.
ReplyDeleteChris
PS.: I haven't been around much lately, but just managed to read the last few weeks' worth of posts yesterday. You just keep getting better.
I once read that lack of sleep is the same as being drunk: you abilities dwindle but your confidence in your abilities increases. I slept for about three hours last night and I've felt inexplicably fantastic all day, which proves something or other.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I will be back on verse forms soon, but am cumbered about with much sesquipedalianism.
Us dissolute parliamentarians actually officially dissolve on Monday. Until then we are as rogish as ever, or prorogued.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.parliament.uk/about/how/elections/general/election_timetable2010.cfm
Sleep is clearly an issue - probelms? Darn trees; clearly some of the evil, child-eating variety, or at least related.
ReplyDelete