Football, the Oscar winner and Parliamentary privilege
Here's a strange one.
Glenda Jackson, the Oscar-winning actress turned Labour MP, has come out fighting against the Football Association because female MPs are banned from the House of Commons football team.
Not that 75-year-old Glenda wants to play, mind you. She is upset that colleagues (Tory MP Tracey Crouch being the most high-profile example) can't play because of their gender, claiming it is a "gross intrusion into the privileges" of the Commons.
Her argument, in this Early Day Motion, is that the privileges guarantee all MPs are equal regardless of gender. What she brilliantly describes as "lady Members" should therefore be allowed to play.
And Glenda has been pushing her point on the radio.
“For me, it’s another indication of what century those in charge of the FA seem to be living in. It could be 1811 instead of 2011,” she said.
Pushed on whether the FA ban, which stops mixed teams once girls reach 13, should be scrapped altogether, the Hampstead and Kilburn MP was a little nonplussed. Her "main concern" was the situation at Westminster.
She said: "You're taking me into an area about which I know very little. I must be entirely honest, I’m not a football fan, it’s not a game I watch. But when you have women, for example, on the front line in our armed services – when you have women in situations across the whole of our society where they are there because they are capable of proving that capability, it seems to me to be utterly absurd that this kind of embargo should still run."
Craig Woodhouse
Follow me on Twitter @craigawoodhouse
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