N Dorries MP SEN: Raving Mythomaniac Ducking Stool Treatment?

Oh my god! Nadine Dorries MP has compared the Expenses Debacle to a McCarthyite Witch Hunt and states that an MP suicide is being expected. Presumably one on the Communist Benches? Or a fellow traveller? They print this fetching picture to go with the story. But Nadine must be right. She must be treated seriously. As the BBC report at the link she's an ex-Nurse. And therefore an expert on all things medical and psychiatric? I don't think so.

I think the records will show that Nadine Dorries MP qualified as an SEN - State Enrolled Nurse - with the global standard being dubbed Licenced Practical Nurse, back in the day when we had such a class of so-called "second tier" nurses. The qualification is no longer offered. It involved following JUST ONE YEAR of the otherwise three-to-four year training. From Anal Thermometry to Bed-Pan Emptying. And C-Z in the nursely ABC could go hang.

And Nadine? She not only barely bothered to make SEN but also got out as soon as she possibly could. She soon ran away to Zambia on a big game hunt, did some child-minding I'll be bound - though she says "ran a community school" - and came back to set up a childcare business, via Astra Zeneca to sold to BUPA, and onwards to parliament. Myth-making as she went. With some Grand Designs in "Chiselling Expenses" unravelling in her wake.

Holding Nadine Dorries up as any kind of medical or nursing professional still less expert is not unlike mistaking a crafty pavior for a Highways Engineer. And in fact the crafty pavior will have time served four years to learn their craft so that's very unfair to them. It like comparing a boys from the blackstuff Yosser Hughes to a Highways Engineer. That's a better analogy.

Liberal Conspiracy recently dubbed her "An Enemy of Science?" We say: she's the Yosser Hughes of her nursely calling.

We must sincerely hope that there are no suicides among our MPs. We tend to agree with Nadine to the extent that yes, this was about successive PMs and Parliaments preferring burgeoning slush funds to proper pay settlements. And yes, without ACA MPs would arguably be underpaid in the salary-inflationary world in which we live.

But if MPs are to be hounded for a bag of nappies, a stick of lippy, a packet of Jaffa Cakes, then we think it is unreasonable to expect the absence of a coherent "Main Home Narrative" and the presence of a mystery house-sitter as being something that really does not need dealing with.