M*ths

[webofevil]

Lord Lucas is responding to the Government statement on education. Towards the end of his heartfelt speech calling for state schools to be allowed to do IGCSE maths, there’s a bit of a surprise:

Lord Lucas: We are limiting our ambitions to masturbating maths.

We all listen to this repeatedly. Is he saying something about “debating”? Is he, for the love of God, saying anything at all other than “masturbating”? It’s not that rude words aren’t allowed in the Chamber, but this one doesn’t make a scrap of sense in context and makes him sound like he has Tourette’s.

So I go and see him. I show him the quote with the problematic part blanked out. “What’s the missing word here?” I ask him. “Because on our speakers it sounds an awful lot like ‘masturbating maths’.”

“Ah,” he says hurriedly. “I know what’s happened. The phrase ‘to master basic maths’ was in the Statement, and as soon as I heard it I could only think of what it sounded like. So when I stood up to talk about mastering basic maths, I must have accidentally said ‘masturbating’ instead.”

“I think you did,” I agree.

“Do you think this might be one of the occasions when Hansard has to edit?” he says hopefully.

I reassure him that it might.
Audio link
(You’ll be hard pressed not to notice that what he actually says is, “To limit our ambitions to masturbating maths is so limited.” Well, coming up with this rhetorical gold is his job; melting it down into usable ingots is ours.)

Comments

[chiller.livejournal.com]

I think he slipped that in deliberately. As it were.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

The look on his face when I spoke to him indicated otherwise. It was more like he had been saying to himself just before he stood up, “Don’t say ‘masturbating’! Don’t say ‘masturbating’!”

[chiller.livejournal.com]

If so that's a brilliant Freudian slip. I wonder who he was referring to with those limited ambitions.

[psychonomy.livejournal.com]

He's complained in the past that we don't report him accurately enough, which is why he's one of the few 'verb' Peers. The cock's in the other fist now, though, isn't it?