Flippers - my answer to all this flummery

It's difficult to know how it got started, but since it's been going so long we're reluctant to stop.

It's like Radio 4's attitude to The Archers in that respect.

However, I do realise tradition is not necessarily a good thing.

The fantastically dangerous placing of sixpences in Christmas puddings in what I can only imagine was originally some perverse Victorian attempt to thin out the population of children is a good example of that. And I think we might also add parliamentary tradition to the list.

We rightly pride ourselves on having an ancient, hard-won and deeply ingrained parliamentary system but I can't help feeling that the pomp and faff that has coalesced around it is partly to blame for making MPs think they're important enough to be allowed to get away with the kind of things we now know they were getting away with.

In truth, the Houses of Parliament are a ridiculous place to work. You can't really blame MPs for getting all self-regarding and hoity-toity when so much of what they do is accompanied by ponderous, humourless ceremony.

Generally, if you are employed alongside men who wear tights as a routine aspect of their working day and you are not engaged in the business of ballet dancing, piracy or an open-air production of Shakespeare, then questions need asking.

MPs, though, don't ask questions about it - they just get a bit dazzled.

Even the building itself - which, with the best will in the world, is an absurd confection which looks like the kind of bouncy castle an oil-rich sultan might commission for his six-year-old's party - does nothing to dampen this.

You'd be the same, mind. If the Queen turned up at your work in fancy dress once a year to read out a bunch of desperate ideas nicked by a failing government from Daily Mail editorials in a bored voice, you'd probably start to think you were special, too.

Here's what we should do: starting with the appointment of John Bercow as Speaker, we should overhaul Parliament's traditions.

Yes, there will be strenuous objection from Telegraph readers and Britain's ailing black rod manufacturing sector, so let me make it clear that I am not suggesting we abolish tradition, merely prick the pomposity so that MPs can't go getting any ideas.

For example, we could have the State Opening exactly as it always is - same personnel, same get-up, same bored old lady, same impenetrable ceremonial guff - with this one exception: everyone involved has to wear flippers.

You can't start thinking you're all that when you're having to lift your knees to your chin when you walk just to stop yourself from tripping over.

Mind you, within 10 years they'd start gravely referring to it as The Procession of The Flapping Feet and we'd be back to square one.

The snag that dogs Boris's deputies

I don't think London's quite got this whole having-a-mayor thing completely down yet.
I should say straight away that this is not the fault of the electorate.

The electorate knows exactly what it likes and, judging from the two we've given a go to so far, what we like is someone who would fit as co-lead in a 1950s Boulting brothers comedy about class war.

Both Red Ken and Bozzer Jozzer have the tang of a Peter Sellers character about them, I always feel.
No, the problem is with the unelected bit of the ticket — the deputy mayor.

Bozzer has just had to wave goodbye to his third in a year. That begins to reflect badly less on the men who occupied that post and more on the one who employed them in the first place. He must simply be the world's worst interviewer.

He clearly doesn't check anyone's CV, otherwise he'd never have employed Ray Lewis. Nor does he ask what they see themselves doing in five years' time, otherwise he would have heard Tim Parker say: "I see myself being four years and 11 months out of this job."

And as for Ian Clement... There's a simple rule that Boris failed to follow here. If, when you get to the bit where you say, "And do you have any questions?" your interviewee says, "Do you take Visa?" don't employ them.

Casual observation suggests the Government must have quietly rushed through a law requiring all newspapers to run an article on Twitter approximately every two days.

Following an office ballot, it falls to me to keep the Standard from being shut down with this contribution: "Answer the question What are you doing?' using 140 characters."

This could either be the basic principle of Twitter, or the description of a staff writing job on Lost. There.