Finally, after five years writing inappropriate comedy, filing dozens of articles, ranting on the radio and doing live shows from Sydney to Mombasa: there’s a chance the UK government might help get Kony’s kidnapped kids home and end the world’s longest-running phony war.
On December 14, MPs and peers from all parties (and the Bishop of Wakefield!) skipped seasonal alcohol opportunities to watch The Worst Date Ever in the Grand Committee Room, the first ever XXX-Rated live comedy show performed in the Houses of Parliament.
- Grand Committee Room, Palace of Westminster, Dec 14 2010
This show came about at the invitation of Mary Creagh MP, shadow cabinet minister and future prime minister (all is not lost, British public - there’s one politician out there who isn’t a mockney psycho). The show was put on with Amnesty International.
Parliament was completely full of coppers seeing off student protesters and their selfish demands for lessons. Inside, the Grand Committee Room was wood-panelled with sweeping ceilings, full of green leather chairs with gold portcullises on them. See above. All reasonably terrifying but the show, the last one I’ll do in Britain, was fantastic: Sunday Times Foreign Editor Sean Ryan and the Mail on Sunday’s Travel Editor Frank Barrett played themselves sending me to Uganda, to much laughter. An audience of politicians, activists, comedy people and senior clergy (bravely shouldering paedo jokes) had fun and wished they’d thought to smuggle booze in. Then we all went to the Red Lion where we got to listen to Jon Snow giving the inside story on WikiLeaks, which this week finally exposed what I’ve been trying to say about the international community, Uganda and the LRA. Finally, landlord and comedy fan Peter Cliffe got us completely drunk.
Thanks to Mary and Amnesty, the result of the Worst Date Ever is an EARLY DAY MOTION that is currently up and running and ready for your MPs to sign. They are surprisingly likely to sign it if you ask them to. After the Houses of Parliament show, EARLY DAY MOTION 117: UGANDA AND THE LORD’S RESISTANCE ARMY got 17 signatures in three days, and MPs emailed people I knew to say they signed after someone drew their attention to what was happening out there.
What is happening out there is a child kidnapping / war profiteering outrage. Joseph Kony has kidnapped somewhere between 20,000 - 66,000 children and young people, and led some of the bloodiest massacres ever seen. No one has stopped him: instead the ‘war’ has become a nice little earner for all parties, except the kids. Previous attempts to stop Kony were secretive, badly-planned disasters: Early Day Motion 117 calls on the British government to help local parties arrest Kony and key Lord’s Resistance Army members as Step One in ending the scam. It’s time to put the ‘war’ under public scrutiny.
If you get a chance, email your MP and ask them to sign. If you want to send them more info, send them here or download RESOLUTION:POSSIBLE LRA CAMPAIGN
The aim is simple: get the kids home.
Jane