Parliament Spends £400,000 On Trees To Shade Their Lunchroom.

In a mindboggling piece of cackhanded madness MP's have decided to spend £400,000 on twelve fig trees to shade their dining room. Nor are these ordinary common or garden fig trees - they are ficus benjamina imported from Florida and valued at £150,000 each. We asked a leading Tory for an explaination; "We have found that MP's sweating over their Brown Windsor soup and spotted dick with custard has become an increasing problem in our new £325 million offices in Portcullis House. As the famous debate between JFK and Richard Nixon demonstrated in 1960, sweating politicians can be especially disastrous during elections. The fig trees were obtained to cure this huge problem for the country. I hasten to add that we didn't actually buy them - we rented them at the rate of £32,500 per year. So, if the country goes bust, we can always send them back." Missing the point by several light years Liberal Democrat Tessa Munt said: "The trees look nice but it would be much better to have bought these trees and have somebody employed to look after all the plants around the estate." Adding some sanity to the debate Labour MP Kevan Jones added: "For this money you could have planted a small forest. Like a lot of things done in the House of Commons they get very little scrutiny." All that remains is to ask "Does anyone have the phone number of a good lumberjack?"