The Duck House

Watching the new theatrical production of ‘The Duck House’ at Nottingham’s Theatre Royal last night I laughed my self silly at ultimately a bunch of facts being outplayed on stage. Surely our politicians couldn’t have been that corrupt could they?

At the end of the play the excellent Ben Miller playing a Labour MP deep in the expenses scandal more yet still intent on joining the dark side, proposes one simple question to the audience, ‘if you would just pay more money you would not have had the scandal.’ He goes on to say this great crisis in in our political world underlines how lucky we are to have politicians such as him….. The audience laugh as we all realise we are all part of the joke of democracy in that we, the voting public, voted them all in!

An old school friend last night confirmed he is running for office. He talks of the under privileged and the need to fight their corner. He doesn’t talk of salary, of expenses, of cabinet position or TV appearances.

We cannot expect all our politicians to be clean, to be above taking shortcuts and stretching the rules. What we can expect though is that the regulation in Parliament keeps them safe and therefore us safe. Whitehall failed us badly and the trust we had in our politicos continues to be washed down The Thames.

Of course a tremendous upside of the grimy politician was that The Duck House was commissioned. The fine cast including Miller, Simon Shepherd and Nancy Carroll were exemplary and clearly having much fun together. A highly recommended play.

Happily Flora & I went to feed the ducks today at Rufford Park in honour of a fine giggle.

A X