I'll Be Googled!...

...one does, of course, wish - nay need even - to keep abreast of developments in all and sundry modern means of communication, if only as the uncertain surfer preferring to ride a wave, howsoever ungainly, not be dashed under.

'Twas indeed many years passed one strongly sensed the movement of this particular tide, when pastors the length of the land could be seen striding out clutching the thick volume that was not the Gospels as before but a Filofax instead.

It was not then a happy sight, nor is it now any particular pleasure to note a conference of clerics all merrily tapping away on their Blueberries - or somesuch wizardry - when they really ought to be paying attention to the Bish's terribly important speechifying.

Granted the old fellow can be dull beyond bearing, but where is there any need, of an instant, to relay the torpor to the world? Show me a priest who 'twitters' and I show you a man who is on the royal highway to perdition. Ours may well be a broad Church - little too wide mostly for my particular liking - but blowed if I'll see it transformed into a broadband one. (Quite smart that. Shall save it for the Sunday homily. Duly written - as God intended - with goose-quill pen and oak-gall ink!)

You'll thus not be too surprised if I show some essential sympathy with our cousins in Norfolk, who are being even now terribly castigated for not taking it upon themselves to search the Internet for any revelations concerning Mrs Truss and her adulterous past. Now, let one be clear here one's purpose. It is not to aver that only they with spotless reputations on the domestic front are fit and proper persons to be duly elected Members, etc., etc.

Perish the thought indeed. One must, after all, be somewhat pragmatic. Strip the place of the morally imperfect and who would be left standing? Granted the appeal of an House of Commons uninhabited and devoid of all and any politicians, a nation set free to mind its own business, and so forth; setting though that aside as an Elysium dream, I am the happier to be governed by the acknowledged sinner far more than by anyone claiming spurious sanctity.

My objection does, though, remain to the heavy criticism levelled at the Selection Committee that it was their implicit job and duty to go surfing for all and any gen about the candidates. When asked if they "had Googled" the lady in question, their only right and proper reply should have been: "Certainly not. I hardly know the woman."

My vote is with the Tennessee farmer, who after having been persuaded with considerable reluctance to have a telephone installed in his house, refused ever to answer it. "If I want to talk to someone then I'll use it, but ain't having no truck with folk who think they can interrupt me just when they fancy."

Hear, hear - as perhaps Mrs Truss will be moved one day to say.