22 June 2017

Old Goats

What are they doing in parliament?

by Chin Chin

It is the goat I felt sorry for.  Okay, the Queen’s Speech had to be changed a bit to accommodate the election result but what about the goat whose skin was used for the original version?

The tradition has long been that the speech is printed on a goatskin held in the gloved hands of the Sovereign and, one way or another, goats seem to have been prepared to live with that sacrifice.  After all, it gives them a role in Constitutional affairs.  More importantly perhaps, it is their contribution to the survival of England’s green and pleasant land and they certainly have an interest in that green and pleasant bit.  They want to eat it.

It is a symbol of the unsatisfactory state of British politics that a perfectly good goatskin can end up covered with crossings out and then being thrown away without the goat community having any sort of say in the matter.  Talk about a sacrifice being rejected.  It is the equivalent of a dragon forgetting itself and spitting out a princess.

Actually I have discovered that my concern was slightly misplaced because it turns out that, although the material on which the speech is written is described as “the goatskin”, in fact it isn’t anything of the sort.  It is just a very superior piece of vellum.  Whew, that’s a relief.  No goat parts are used in relation to the speech. That will certainly remove a problem for the Greens, whose party naturally favours the predominance of vegetables, should they happen to win the next election.

But wait just a minute.  British politics is a thing of twists and turns at the moment and there is another complication to be considered. Just what is “vellum”?

The clue is in the Latin, the derivation from “vitulinum” meaning “made from calf”.  I see. It is a calf then which has sacrificed its skin in vain.  Well, that is worse when you come to think of it. The goat, had there been one, might have enjoyed a long and happy life browsing the countryside before making its contribution to society, whereas a calf has hardly had time for more than a nibble or two. It is like charging students tuition fees.

It isn’t just calves, however, who have to make a sacrifice to assist in the legislative process.  Since the days of Edward III, the speaker of the House of Lords has sat on the Woolsack.  Until 2006, he was also the Lord Chancellor, head of the judiciary so you can see why he felt entitled to lounge about on a giant cushion like a neo-Caesar.  His dignity was a matter of national importance and the country naturally expected its sheep to make a contribution to it.  But did they?  In 1938 the Woolsack was opened and the stuffing was examined.  Actually, it wasn’t wool at all but horsehair and, although the horsehair was then replaced with wool from all over the Commonwealth, you wonder for how long sheep had been getting credit for a contribution being made by their equine brothers and sisters. And there are more material rewards too.  In truth it should be horses which can be driven over London Bridge by Freemen of the City.

Still, today’s issue is the goatskin.  Why should Her Majesty read from it rather than from an ordinary piece of paper? After all Parliament has just given up the practice of recording all acts on vellum.  Isn’t pencil and paper a more practical approach?

The answers to this lie in freedom of information.  Not the Freedom of Information Act, which is a mere subdivision of the more general subject, but the general right of an Englishman or Englishwoman to read the laws by which the country is governed.  Most of us, in our youth, used that immortal falsehood “the dog ate my homework.” The official equivalent is that “those papers no longer exist”.  If something is written on vellum, there can be no nonsense about the paper having rotted and, anyway, there is presumably a dog-free vellum storeroom in which it is carefully maintained.  Alright, no one may be able to work out what an old act of parliament said any more but at least they will able to read the Queen’s Speech.  That will give future generations some idea of what was going on in 2017.

But such certainty comes at a price and it is been suggested that that price is delay.  Some commentators have suggested that one of the things delaying the Queen’s Speech is not indecision by the Government but the time Ink takes to dry on the goatskin.  That sounds like piffle, probably because it clearly is.  Can it really be the case that the speech has to be inscribed in an unalterable form several days before it is delivered? What happens if the government has a change of heart?  In any case it is the ink that has to dry and not the skin and, as one distinguished vellum maker has been quick to point out, different inks dry at different rates.  If you saw Mrs May in Smythsons ordering some especially slow drying ink you should have deduced that her deal with the DUP was still not quite in place.

Ink, you will be relieved to hear, does not come from animals at all. It is mainly made up of berries.  Nonetheless in 21st century Britain all groups must be properly represented.  Whether or not there has been a waste of berries has not been revealed but it is certainly a wicked betrayal of the sacrifice made by the nation’s flora to blame it for delays which are far more likely to be the result of uncertainty by the government about its policy.

 

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