W.D. Clarke’s Reviews > Verbatim: A Novel > Status Update

< i > I don't like to Hansardize...

From: Clerk of the House
To: Hansard Editor

Re: American spelling
Do you think your editors could agree on whether using the American spelling is best practice when members exercise their creativity in turning nouns into verbs? Please advise

audacter calumniare, semper aliquid haeret
The unofficial parliamentary motto?
("Slander boldly-something always sticks!")

[...The legislature] was like one of those modern plays where nobody does anything, but there’s always this anticipation about something that never happens but is imminent.

It is not unparliamentary temperately to criticize statements made by members as being contrary to the facts: but no imputation of intentional falsehood is permissible. On rare occasions this may result in the House having to accept two contradictory accounts of the same incident.”
—Beauchesne’s Parliamentary Rules

Explains a lot...

Dr. Levy: Whether conscious or not, that doesn’t matter. The insult is there in Hansard and will always be there for people to read.
Mr. Carew: Who reads Hansard? We’re the only ones...

No longer!

Mr. Tucker: Don’t cover up now.
Premier Burke: I would have to—I assure the hon. Member for Mayers-Shagwell that any wrongdoing would be fully exposed. Much like he was alleged to have been on Canada Day.
Some Hon. Members: Hear, hear!
Some Hon. Members: Oh, oh!
Speaker: Order, please!
Politicians =a pretty sophomoronic lot.
But it=July 1! Celebrate Canada Day by exposing yourself to Jeff Bursey, peeps :D

Carlyle North Carlyle South Carlyle Centre Carlyle East Carlyle West...

This listing of legislative districts sounds a lot like Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, where everything, it seems, Is 'Margaree' something-or-other: Margaree Forks, Margaree Falls, Margaree Centre (at the centre of precisely nothing at all), Margaree Valley, Upper East Margaree...

I am hardly going to risk my $1600CDN or so (cos who's counting?) investment by reading and marking up the hardcover, am I?! No, but holy shit am I surprised to find that the author of the (excellent) forward to this new paperback edition is someone I worked with once on a Pynchon thingy, Sascha Pohlmann...