Bring your baby to work? What if you’re flying a F35 Lightning?

WHEN Labour MP Stella Creasy appeared in the Commons with a mewling infant recently, she sparked a huge debate about whether people should be allowed to take their babies to work.

Many, including Tory big hitter Dominic Raab, said it was fine. Others said it should even be encouraged.

PALabour MP Stella Creasy appeared in the Commons with a mewling infant recently and sparked a huge debate about whether people should be allowed to take their babies to work[/caption]

PA:Press AssociationCould you accommodate a baby in the cockpit of an F35 Lightning?[/caption]

Really? Even if you’re a fighter pilot?

It may be possible to accommodate a baby in the cockpit of an F35 Lightning and it’s also possible that it could survive a 9g turn — their heads can, and often do, adopt some incredible angles — but even though many women can multi-task very well, I’m not sure a mother could win a dogfight if she had an infant suckling on her breast at the time.

Plus, there’s always the danger it would accidentally push a button marked “fire”.

Or “eject”.

So what about hospitals?

Would you be happy for a surgeon to operate on your eye if he or she had a baby strapped to their chest?

Me neither.

The problem is that babies are endlessly distracting.

You watch a group of new mothers meeting for a coffee and I guarantee that every single anecdote will be interrupted by one of them suddenly having to attend to her child.

Which is licking the floor, or vomiting, or breathing weirdly.

Then, at some point, one of the kids will start screaming.

Which will distract everyone within a 17,000-mile radius.

It’s said that Krakatoa produced the loudest noise ever heard on earth, but I would dispute that. Babies are louder.

And when one of them is at full chat, no one in the county can think straight.

Almost every wedding service I’ve been to has been ruined by a screaming baby.

Quite a few funerals, too.

TWO-JOBS STELLA

And there is nothing quite so distressing as finding, as you board a plane for a 13-hour flight to Hong Kong, that you’re next to a life form that’s only a few days old.

These, though, are irritations. Whereas in the House of Commons, things could be so much worse.

Let’s say China invaded Taiwan. Every MP would be summoned to the chamber to discuss the next steps and you’d hope they’d make wise, calm decisions.

But how would this be possible if one of them brought a screaming baby into the room?

And there’s another issue.

We are told that being a mother is a full-time job.

Which means Stella Creasy, an MP and a mum, has two jobs.

I thought that sort of thing was frowned upon in politics these days.

We have to face facts, I’m afraid.

She could easily have left her child with a nanny or in the House of Commons crèche, but she chose not to because, like every mother in all of human history, she’s proud of the fact that she has produced a life form.

And she thinks everyone else in the world will be interested in it.

German music tough to herr

AFTER 16 years at the helm, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stood down this week in a touching ceremony where a military band played a song by a German punk artist called Nina Hagen.

Well it was that or I guess the Scorpions.

GettyGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel stood down this week in a touching ceremony[/caption]

AlamyA military band played a song by a German punk artist called Nina Hagen[/caption]

AFPGuitarists from the rock band Scorpions – Rudolf Schenker and Matthias Jabs[/caption]

I’ve listened to the song in question – it’s called You Forgot The Colour Film – and I strongly suggest you don’t listen to it, because it’s like Bjork singing along to an oompah band. It’s very possibly the worst noise ever recorded.

I think it may even be worse than listening to Upside Down by Diana Ross.

And Finally by CeCe Peniston.

At the same time. It’s strange isn’t it.

Germany has given the world so much, but when it comes to music, no one has been able to come up with a decent tune since Beethoven decided to pickle his liver with lager.

Woke warrior

WOKE warrior Lewis Hamilton arrived in Saudi Arabia this week to drive a car that’s sponsored in part by Kingspan, the company whose cladding was on the Grenfell Tower.

It’s OK.

GettyLewis Hamilton arrived in Saudi Arabia this week to drive a car that’s sponsored in part by Kingspan, the company whose cladding was on the Grenfell Tower[/caption]

When I heard, my shoulders sagged a bit as well.

TVR is a sexy beast

MUCH has been said about Boris Johnson’s speech to business leaders in which he lost his place and then talked about Peppa Pig.

However, I’m more interested in what he was saying before it all went Air Malaysia.

Journalist Adrian Gill once said that his V8 TVR sounded like: ‘Two lesbians in a bucket’

He made a lot of engine sounds and said that we all enjoy a car that makes a noise like a “sucking dove”.

At first I thought it might be some obscure literary reference, but so far as I can tell, it isn’t.

So what noise does a dove make when it’s sucking?

I can’t imagine it’s either loud, or exciting, in any way.

I’ve spent a lifetime thinking up new ways of describing the noise a car makes.

But the best ever was from a journalist called Adrian Gill, who said that his V8 TVR sounded like: “Two lesbians in a bucket.”

Crazy winter craze

IN the olden days, people used to wrap up warm when the chills of winter began to whistle through the trees.

But not any more.

AlamyWild swimming makes absolutely no sense at all[/caption]

Now, when the thermometer doesn’t get above one degree all day, people are suddenly overcome with an urge to hurl themselves into a lake.

It’s called wild swimming and it makes absolutely no sense at all.

No one plays wild tennis, on the side of a moor, and no one ever sits down for a game of wild Monopoly, where all the money blows away.

I can swim. And will, if the boat I’m on sinks.

I’ve even been known to sit in a pool on a hot day.

But I would not get into a lake in December. Because it’s not “wild”. It’s daft.

Neigh sayers

SO, the always fantastic Science Museum in London has been forced to drop an exhibit about sex.

Visitors were shown how chromosomes and hormones determine whether a person is a boy or a girl.

PA:Press AssociationThe always fantastic Science Museum in London has been forced to drop an exhibit about sex[/caption]

But then along came a left-wing person to say there was no mention of transgenderism.

Hmmm. Tricky one.

Because while a boy is allowed by society – and rightly so – to call himself a girl, it doesn’t change the science.

And that’s what the Science Museum is all about.

I mean, I could go around saying that I’m a horse and everyone would have to live with that.

Except for the world’s scientists, whose job is to say: “Yes. But actually, you’re not.”