{"id":2547,"date":"2012-11-06T19:04:35","date_gmt":"2012-11-06T19:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=2547"},"modified":"2012-11-06T19:04:35","modified_gmt":"2012-11-06T19:04:35","slug":"tory-mp-in-reality-show-furore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=2547","title":{"rendered":"Tory MP In Reality Show Furore"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today came the news<\/a> that Nadine Dorries (a Tory MP) is being suspended as a Tory (not an MP) for appearing on the reality TV show called “I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here”.<\/p>\n

Now I’m hardly the most ardent Tory supporter in the country – in fact I can’t stand them, and a quick look indicates that I’m even less likely to like Nadine’s favourite hobby horses. But I believe all this fuss is a little over the top, and perhaps there is a certain amount of snobbishness getting involved here. To a certain extent this is understandable, as the reality show in question is hardly in the calibre of “Question Time” or some other serious<\/em> current affairs programme.<\/p>\n

And there is the concern of who will do her job, when she’s off in Australia getting filmed doing ridiculous stuff on camera.<\/p>\n

But we do not know that Nadine hasn’t already or plans to make suitable arrangements to ensure that any urgent demands by her constituents are met in some way or another. And what about all the other part-time MPs? Is Nadine the only<\/em> MP who has ever taken time off from her duties to do something else? Let’s not have double standards here.<\/p>\n

And similarly, there have been plenty of MPs on TV shows of one kind or another. Is it just the type<\/em> of show that is of concern here? Are other politicians concerned that an MP appearing on this show will bring politicians into disrepute?<\/p>\n

If so, I have news for those other politicians – politicians have such a poor reputation that this appearance on a reality show is likely to improve<\/em> their reputation. And I’m not a fan of the show in question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today came the news that Nadine Dorries (a Tory MP) is being suspended as a Tory (not an MP) for appearing on the reality TV show called “I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here”. Now I’m hardly the most ardent Tory supporter in the country – in fact I can’t stand them, and a […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[12,3],"tags":[115,1027,176,30],"class_list":["post-2547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","tag-conservative","tag-nadine-dorries","tag-tory","tag-uk","category-12-id","category-3-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-F5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2548,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547\/revisions\/2548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}