[Acrylic-bob]

Since a 'Maiden' speech must, of necessity be anodyne, self-referential and, frankly, deeply boring, this one scores respectably on all counts. If I could be bothered to look, which I cannot, I am sure that I would find that the maiden speeches of most of Accrington's and Hyndburn's MP's over the last 50 odd years have said much the same sort of thing. Quite how Jack Straw (reported in the papers this morning) equates our Graham as one of the rising stars of the new intake is a bit beyond me (Logic has never been one of Straw's strong points), and such an admission scarcely fills one with confidence in the abilities of the rest of the New Labour seat warmers.

However, that aside for the moment, if Graham is to break with tradition and indulge in any further speechmaking, might I suggest that he uses some of his expenses to employ the services of someone who has more than just a passing acquaintance with the complexities of the english language to edit his maunderings. It is all very well to go rushing off at tangents here, trusting that members will already be familiar with much of one's abbreviated postings, but I rather fancy that standards of oratory are a deal more exacting in Parliament.

Overall 5/10: For £60 odd K per year I expected more than a precis of his Accy-Web postings.