Here is a link to David Heath's website, with a summary of what he was going to say.

His speech was pretty good, and he did include in it references to aspects of all this that keep on getting ignored - that it is not just about restrictions on licensed premises, that it's not just about folk music, and that the restrictions hit at the right of people to make music or sing for their own enjoyment.

The government response from the minister for sport (Kim Howells is in the States "promoting tourism" which is a laugh in the circumstances) was sympathetic enough, agreeing that the present law is stupid. He didn't quite rule out there being guidelines telling councils and police not to be so stupid in enforcing the law. And he said that someday there'll be legislation, and they are still supposed to be consulting on it.

And the Weymouth MP intervened denouncing the PEL stupidities and referring to his massive correspondence, though he didn't mention The Shambles as such.

The chamber of course was virtually deserted - not more than five MPs so far as I could see (the rest were off to the bars I assume)- so I suggest that when people write to their MPS they make a point of saying that they noticed that they had not felt it important enough to grace the adjournment debate with their presence.

In the very very unlikely case where an MP might actually have been present they'll be sure to write back to say so, and you could open up a useful correspondence, since if they were present they can be assumed to be interested (unless they had fallen asleep.)

Here is a link to the list of MPs, including the few who have emails and the fewer still who have websites. And here again is the link to FaxYourMP, which is a much more efficient way to get to them than emails.

And while I'm about it, here is a link to the Hansard Search Engine, which is a great way of finding out anything they might have said about anything in the House. They can run, but they can't hide nowadays.

You know, they are going to wish they had sorted out this stuff about PELs a long time ago...