Speaker John Bercow has recently commented that he would like to curb the "yobbery and public-school twittishness" displayed in the House of Commons. This, coming hot on the heels of research by the Hansard Society, which has found that the most common descriptions by the public of Prime Minister's Questions are "noisy", "childish", "over-the-top" and "pointless". But bawling like toddlers fighting at a creche is not an activity exclusive to the mother of all parliaments. Around the world, elected representatives regularly shout, wail, make animal noises, cry and fight. Here are 10 examples:
1. Often, politicians make weird noises just for fun:
2. But if someone has a silly leopard-print jacket, they get greeted by cat noises:
3. Tom Watson got very schoolyard when he wailed at Michael Gove that he was "a miserable pipsqueak of a man!" Ooooh burn.
4. If a congressman doesn't have a good day, sometimes the toys get thrown out of the pram.
5. Chicken noises greeted Veronique Massonneau in France to imply that she's just a bird. In absurd scenes, Massonneau rounded on the cluckers, asking "Who's doing that? I'm not a chicken, ok?"
This incident came a year after Housing Minister Cécile Duflot was wolf-whistled for wearing a flower-print dress. When challenged on this behaviour, the offending Deputy took a defence of "sexist, moi?" and said he was just paying her a compliment.
6. When they're bored, they just talk about whatever pops into their head, such as this Canadian parliamentary debate on the subject of the zombie apocalypse:
7. Occasionally MPs just lose their shit like Nicholas Cage trying to inject some drama into a dry script:
8. Sometimes things really bubble over, such as in the Ukrainian parliament, when it just erupted into a brawl, presaging the current scenes on the streets of that country. My favourite bit is the guy with the ponytail ineffectually throwing a pen at the speaker.
9. In fact, politicians resort to violence so much that there are several YouTube compliations devoted to them doing just that. Look out for the guys who seem to have brought along umbrellas to protect themselves from all the crap being thrown at them.
10. It's easy to see why Bercow's predecessor, Betty Boothroyd pronounced at one point that she was 'sick and tired' of hearing from one heckler. Perhaps Bercow just needs to take a leaf out of her book and work on his classroom control.