Simon Carr: Nagging and snapping at each other, democracy in action

Sketch: The current Defence Secretary doesn't offer sufficient content to be classified as true or false

What a rotten rump of a decomposing Parliament we're sitting through. What a – I won't go on about it.

The weekend gave us all those revelations about our Prime Minister. The rudeness, the stupidity, the dishonesty, the – I was nearly off again. It isn't worth it. It's impossible to think any worse of the fellow, or any better. And it wouldn't matter except the war keeps blowing our men up, and cutting theirs down. The parties nag and snap away at each other over little this and tiny that, "holding each other to account".

Anyway, defence questions.

Liam Fox, the shadow Defence Secretary, asked about the weekend claims from Geoff Hoon, that Gordon Brown had personally cut the helicopter budget by £1.4bn when Chancellor. Did the corroborating letters exist, and would the department release them?

Quentin Davies, the Defence minister, caused pleasure by saying: "I wasn't here in 2004." (He had been "here" but on the other benches, sitting as a Tory before he defected.) He said: "I didn't and haven't seen the letters."

That could mean anything. Geoff Hoon told the Hutton inquiry he hadn't seen the Evening Standard's famous "45-minute" headline saying WMD could be launched in an instant and land on British territory.

He was the Defence Secretary at the time so "I haven't seen" must, in some sense, have been true. They never lie, but by God they can tell the truth so falsely they don't need to.

The current Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth, doesn't offer sufficient content to be classified as true or false. When he says "there is not support for the Taliban in Afghanistan", it's not worth trying to understand what he means.

Gordon Prentice pointed out that many Afghan officers are illiterate. Robert Key suggested none of our military mentors speak Pushtu. Andrew MacKinlay claimed a dam we'd built had never worked. The minister's answers are not worth reporting.

Peter Tapsell is a knight of the shires with a manner as large as Lincolnshire. His Rs also roll like the wold. Therefore MPs jeer and hoot when he stands up.

He said there were two contradictory forces against us in Afghanistan. The Taliban who would always fight to repel invaders, and Osama bin Laden – the protagonist of an international caliphate. Could we not, therefore, offer the Taliban some sort of deal in exchange for rejecting al Qa'ida, he suggested.

It's quite a proposition, that. It really deserves the fullest discussion. "I'm ashamed for having laughed at him," one Labour member of the Foreign Affairs Committee said. He's probably leaving Parliament and sees things differently. "I am," he repeated. "I'm ashamed."

I assume I've spelt that word correctly; it's not one I'm familiar with. I'll look it up later to find out what it means.