Thanks, Banks

Are the people of West Ham "tedious"?

That's what Tony Banks, their MP, thinks, and he wasn't afraid to say it to the BBC.

"I found it intellectually numbing, tedious in the extreme," he said of constituency work. "It might sound a little disparaging to say this about people's lives and their problems and we did deal with them ... but I got no satisfaction from this at all. I really didn't."

Only a little disparaging? Banks is stepping down at the next election, so he won't be worried about ballot-box backlash, but you have to wonder why he went into politics if he doesn't really like people. After all, he once tabled an Early-Day Motion welcoming an asteroid strike that would wipe out humanity and allow nature to start again.

So, Banks is best characterised by one of those words journalists use when they mean "unable to keep his mouth shut": something like "flamboyant", "colourful" or "controversial".

But Londonist is torn. Although the people of West Ham may now be pleased to see the back of Banks, parliament will lose a genuine eccentric. With the place already stuffed to the gunnels with faceless drones, it will certainly be less interesting without him.