@sophielouisecc Dylan Thomas and Ernest Hemingway drank all day, and created Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night and The Old Man and the Sea. Do you have a Nobel Prize?
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Tim Almond
37 posts
You don’t have to be left wing to think MPs shouldn’t be drinking on the job.
Most workers can’t do that.
Their job is important and they should take it seriously.
We should hold them to higher standards than others - not lower.
Public service is about sacrifice - and that may mean waiting till you don’t have to vote anymore before getting shitfaced.
It’s really not that difficult to use your common sense and think this.
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@HeldinEU The objection to that is that it's illegal to drink on London Transport. Although personally, I don't think it should be.
There's a whole lot of things wrong with Diane Abbott before I get to mojitos (which I approve of).
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Also, can you remember the nastiness when Diane Abbott had a tinned mojito on the train home?
PoliticsJOE@PoliticsJOE_UK
"You can smell the alcohol when people are in between votes." Green MP Hannah Spencer tells us what Westminster is REALLY like. The full interview is live on YouTube, and as a podcast here: linktr.ee/howtorebuildbr…
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@EFCevie Do you think we should randomly drug test people working in the public sector?
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@rich4you @RowanPelling That's not the question I asked. The ones that do, should we do that?
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@TimAlmond345722 @RowanPelling They usually don't.. the majority of work places don't have subsidized canteens.. what private sector companies do is up to them , we the tax payer is Funding the subsidized bars at Westminster.
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Fascinating to see people divide over hot topic: whether MPs should drink in parliament. Obv, no one favours boorish drunks, but I'm always going to favour the "swift pint" Cavaliers against the abstemious Puritans. Not just because my parents ran a pub for 34 years, with locals talking politics at the bar.
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@rich4you @RowanPelling and how often did you do a shift per week?
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@TimAlmond345722 @RowanPelling It's was a mental health NHS unit ..I was expected to be needed to be available any time doing a shift .. I drank alcohol on days off ..voting in parliament is part of the role .. if you know there is a late vote , dont go to the bar
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@RowanPelling @rich4you Winston Churchill defeated Adolf Hitler with a whisky and soda in the morning, and a pint of Pol Roger at lunchtime, while Adolf was tea total.
Such a good customer, they named a Champagne after him.
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I am bound to have a slightly different view on this because I was raised in a pub and then worked on magazines and newspapers (37 years now). I have often worked very long shifts, especially on the small mags as you do everything yourself, much of it was punctuated by a drink or two. Without, I trust, compromising standards or devotion to duty.
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@rich4you @RowanPelling Do you think councils should be banned from subsidising coffee and canteens too? Both are giving people something at a reduced price.
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@RowanPelling @TimAlmond345722 I love pubs , and it's a shame we are losing so many. Journalism is probably different to day working in the NHS etc. I don't like the idea that the bars in parliament are subsidized ( when other pubs don't have that luxury) or that's it's somehow part of the culture for them
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@Psychicchic74 @sophielouisecc Also, it doesn't really matter which it is. If I see a client, finish at 4, 2 hour train home, I am drinking during working hours, as that 2 hour train is part of my working day. So it isn't as simple as "drinking during working day=wrong".
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@TimAlmond345722 @sophielouisecc Would you have a drink before going to see the client or before the meeting?
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Don’t understand why the right are attacking the green MP re alcohol
Yes she’s a hypocrite because of the greens pro heroin policies
But - in most jobs in Britain - if you were drinking on the job - you would be sacked.
Of course our law makers shouldn’t be shitfaced whilst voting.
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@rich4you @RowanPelling So if someone works in the daytime, and then has to do a conference call with San Francisco at 9pm, you think that from 5pm to 9pm at home they should be teatotal?
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@TimAlmond345722 @RowanPelling They are still working .. no one has ab issue with an after work drink or at non work events. Meetings are also part of the working day .. the bars are subsidized too.
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@rich4you @RowanPelling We pay the PM less than the CEO of The Gym Group, a £300m company. If you're at the standard to run The Gym Group, why would you want to take a pay cut to be PM?
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@rich4you @RowanPelling The majority of workers aren't making decisions about billions of pounds of spending. When you're hiring people to decide whether to spend £100bn on HS2 or not, you want smart, experienced people, not the kid who started working in HMV last month.
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@rich4you @RowanPelling So you started at 6am, worked until early next morning. What time and where were you having a drink? Was this routine, 4 days a week or rare? Was it an office or somewhere with dangerous machinery around?
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@TimAlmond345722 @RowanPelling I used to work shift ,start at 6am not finish till early next morning, attend meeting and have breaks. Never drank alcohol because when in it was non alcoholic environment.. drank non alcoholic drinks or had alcohol after work had completely finished or days..
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@Psychicchic74 @sophielouisecc Rarely before, but I'm not averse to it.
But what's the issue with having one beer? You get to a town, stop for lunch have a beer at 12. You get a taxi and get to the client at 1. The liver has processed nearly all of that unit in that time.
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@ZackPolanski When you thought you could hypnotise breast growth, were you sober? Because even if I had slammed a bottle of tequila I would have thought that was bollocks.
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A choice for Labour MPs before a big set of elections to go out campaigning on:
"MPs should be able to drink alcohol before voting because they work long days."
They're really revealing themselves, aren't they?
Time to replace Labour.
Join.greenparty.org.uk
Luke Charters MP@lukejcr
🚨Breaking news: MPs are human and sometimes have a drink. Classic clickbait farming 👎 MPs work long days for constituents, and yes, sometimes share a drink in the evening with colleagues. Last week I was scandalously spotted with… an alcohol-free pint or two between votes 😱 But sure, let’s talk about that instead of the Greens’ wacky policies. Trying to distract us, maybe? 🙄
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@Stsantek @ZoeJardiniere We get bad MPs because frankly, the public expect miracle workers on £93K, doing an anti-social, low-security job with lots of scrutiny about not just their work but their personal life and to fix all their problems.
Anyone who is in middle management would be worse off doing it
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What do you mean by “on the job” ? If MPs have to be in Parliament until late at night, which they often do three days a week, for months at a time, and while they wait they go out to the dedicated socialising areas of the Parliamentary estate, the terrace and bars, to buy a pint for their staff members, or talk to journalists, or other colleagues, you consider that on the job presumably, but I fail to see how it is different from any other working person going to the pub with colleagues after work. I am very sad that a lot of people in Westminster seem to have alcohol problems, and it seems to me like a wider societal problem not just limited to Westminster. But that is not an argument for dehumanising political work environments.
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Yeah no, sorry, MPs are often cooped up in Parliament for 15 hours a day, they will have a drink with journalists or colleagues and will still be discussing politics -their job, as Hannah says. I don’t like the blanket demonisation of MPs and Hannah should know better after she had already been accused of not taking the job seriously because she took part in that dancing event in Portcullis house. It was unfair to call her unserious about that then and it is unfair of her to now suggest that MPs having a drink in between votes which take up all night is by default bad.
PoliticsJOE@PoliticsJOE_UK
"You can smell the alcohol when people are in between votes." Green MP Hannah Spencer tells us what Westminster is REALLY like. The full interview is live on YouTube, and as a podcast here: linktr.ee/howtorebuildbr…
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@Donna__McLean It's be a sackable offence anywhere else.
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Working in an A&E department or a children & families team frequently involves 12 hour shifts, but you'd be on a gross misconduct charge if you were caught drinking. The cosy journo chats and lobbying on subsidised booze is an elitist culture.
Stella Tsantekidou@Stsantek
Yeah no, sorry, MPs are often cooped up in Parliament for 15 hours a day, they will have a drink with journalists or colleagues and will still be discussing politics -their job, as Hannah says. I don’t like the blanket demonisation of MPs and Hannah should know better after she had already been accused of not taking the job seriously because she took part in that dancing event in Portcullis house. It was unfair to call her unserious about that then and it is unfair of her to now suggest that MPs having a drink in between votes which take up all night is by default bad.
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@Donna__McLean So is it bad that lifeguards wear a swimsuit to work when it wouldn't be acceptable for a fireman?
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@rich4you @RowanPelling So they might have started the day at 8am, working until 9pm, then waiting for a vote.
Do you know why we get lousy MPs? Because we expect them to do an anti-social job, with not huge pay, low job security, to fix all their problems and behave like saints.
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@rich4you @RowanPelling Oh, knock it off. MPs are not clocking in and out. It's a strange form of work with long, disjointed days. Monday in parliament is normally 2:30 to 10:30pm, but the day also includes travelling from the constituency, meetings.
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