As a follow-up to this story, a photographer for the paper persuades an elderly lady to recreate her poses of alarm and horror:

He may just have become leader of UKIP but Lord Pearson hasn’t lost sight of what’s important: mentioning random animals to anyone who’ll listen.

Lord Pearson: If you are a sheep or a lemming you don’t join UKIP… I want UKIP to gum up the present political system completely so the monkeys can’t make any laws which we don’t want… The corrupt octopus isn’t going to turn into a cuddly teddy bear. [Times]

The best yet from UKIP’s Lord Pearson, who is forever trying to convince the House that the EU is a “corrupt octopus”:

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: … the UK’s rejection of the treaty might cause a genuine debate in Brussels, from which some genuine reform might emerge [but] I fear that this beast in Brussels is not that sort of animal. An octopus does not easily become a dolphin, but it might, just a little bit. [Hansard]

What with his claim last week that, “This particular frog leapt with such speed that I was caught on the wrong leg and was not able to move the amendment in time”, it seems the noble Lord’s entire political outlook is expressed through the medium of animals. Perhaps the room where he writes his speeches is covered in animal wallpaper.

Thanks to psychonomy for passing this on—and indeed for transcribing it in the first place:

The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Rooker): When I flicked through a newspaper this morning, I could not figure out why on earth someone had done a diary piece about how many times I have mentioned the word “squirrels” in the past six months. I thought, “Blimey, someone’s calculated this”. It was only seven times; the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, is apparently on 200. With the reshuffle coming, the piece said that I do not have much time to make up in mentioning the word “squirrels”. Well, squirrels are actually very important. Red squirrels are more important than grey squirrels. I now realise why someone has been alerted to the fact that squirrels need a mention.

Lord Rowe-Beddoe: The eloquence of the opener of the debate, the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, when he used Betjeman’s words to describe the churches of England and Wales...

Ah. Not “elephants”, then.

Memo to me: they're not "ant-social behaviour orders".

The entire NHS is getting a shiny new computer system. Developed by Fujitsu, rather than in one of the government's usual entirely above board and not remotely questionable deals with its most favoured companies, the system stands a chance of being adequate—although that point in its favour has to be pitted against the natural law that any computer system developed by the government is almost guaranteed to fail so cataclysmically that no profanity known to man is sufficient to describe it.

A document about this is being circulated to all NHS staff, most of whom appear to have dutifully ticked their names and passed it on without reading it. This is a shame, as it means they'll have missed, on page 2, Frequently Asked Question 10.

Frequently Asked Question 10: "What is a COW?"

Stop sniggering at the back. As you should all know, a COW is of course a Computer On Wheels. Presumably this is to distinguish it from a Computer On Desk, Computer On Layers Of Netting, Computer *n Clinic Kitchen Surface Under Cupboard Kept Empty Recently, etc etc.

The official symbol of Russian Army Intelligence: