Rupert Goodwins' Diary

Thursday 2/05/2002

Let it never be said that ZDNet UK doesn't cover the issues in depth. Our man in Parliament, the deceptively youthful Graeme Wearden, attended the parliamentary select committee on culture, media and sport for their report on why BT should be split up. The details of the proposed bifurcation need not concern us here -- the real question is, how far do we trust people who dress like funfair hawkers. The chairman set the standard: Gerald Kaufman, looking more and more like Kermit the Frog in his declining years, sported a pink, purple, blue and maroon tie reliably reported as "a kind of shimmery affair, standing out like a stunned parakeet against his light grey suit."

Following in Kaufman's sartorial assault, Chris Bryant MP had a stripey tie of yellow, red and blue -- in itself not too far into the ultraviolet end of the spectrum of bad taste, but when combined with his pink shirt the result was "strangely unsettling, not to say hypnotically rebarbarative."

Please, our elected masters: stop this practice before someone has an eye out.