Maybe it will take a mace to clean up Parliament. (Letter from the Publisher).

A "mace," as each schoolboy once knew, is a carbonized iron club used by knights in battle to smash heads. Of all pointless medieval weapons it was the bluntest and quite popular. It thus became the type of parliamentary authority; perhaps because popular democracy itself is a pointless instrument.

Last month Esquimalt MP Keith Martin did the unforgivable: he marched to the table in the midmost point of the chamber, hoisted the ceremonial mace that nobody is suppos to touch and declared to the Speaker, "We don't live in a democracy any more!" He then set it down, scowled at the rule ...