Daily catch-up: No 10 vs the Treasury in the parliamentary quiz

Plus the weekly quiz in the House of Commons, featuring questions about South Atlantic geography, and a picture of an abandoned underground railway station

Abandoned City Hall Subway Stop in New York, via Abandoned Pics.

• The Parliamentary Press Gallery Quiz took place at the House of Commons last night: a fiercely contested event with 21 teams from the media and politics. The main interest was the competition between the teams from 10 Downing Street and Treasury. Despite confident assertions from James Chapman, George Osborne's head of communications and a former quiz setter himself in his Daily Mail days (responsible for the best question of past years, "Which is the third largest cathedral in Britain by volume?"), the Treasury team were decisively defeated, coming 15th. The No 10 team came second. The winners were The Times.

In the side show, my team, The Independent on Sunday, were beaten by our sister newspaper The Independent, coming ninth and seventh.

My contribution was modest. I knew who the first divorced US president was and which gas mark 200C is. I knew in which decade Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment was first published, and in which 1993 film Feathers kidnapped an unwilling accomplice to steal a diamond from the city museum. Also, what is mass times velocity and which London borough is on both sides of the Thames? But I didn't know which Tube station has the most escalators (it doesn't matter whether King's Cross-St Pancras or Bank-Monument count as single stations because it is neither of those), nor the title of the seventh and so far last Police Academy film, which was provided from deep inside nerd territory by team-mate Robert Hutton. (Answers here.) Nor did we discover which team had described itself as Quizlamic State.

• Prime Minister's Questions was interesting yesterday. Trivially because Jeremy Corbyn was flanked to his right by a row of 11 women on Labour's front bench, with two men (Tom Watson and Vernon Coaker) and another woman (Rosie Winterton) to his left. The Government front bench, on the other hand, had just four women on it.

More substantially, Corbyn's weakness as a parliamentarian is starting to show. His questions, about student grants and student nurse bursaries, were important but, as Lloyd Evans said, he "lacks any forensic guile". David Cameron was under no pressure to do more than to rehearse some sound bites he had prepared earlier, and then to repeat things that Corbyn had said to Andrew Marr on Sunday.

As Michael Deacon put it, "Jeremy Corbyn is fading before our eyes" and "Labour MPs just sit there, deflated and useless, like row upon row of punctured footballs".

I don't think the Conservatives are pulling their punches on purpose, but it is too easy for them and so there is little sense of political antagonism in the Chamber. It took Nigel Dodds, deputy leader of the Northern Irish DUP, to stoke the fire. He referred to Corbyn's words about the Falklands on The Andrew Marr Show:

I think there has to be a discussion about how you can bring about some reasonable accommodation with Argentina. It seems to me ridiculous that in the 21st century we’d be getting into some enormous conflict with Argentina about the islands just off it. Yes, of course the islanders have an enormous say in this, let’s bring about some sensible dialogue. It happened before, I’m sure it can happen again.

Marr: An enormous say but not a veto perhaps?

Veto? They’ve got the right to stay where they are, they’ve got a right to decide on their own future, and that will be part of it. Let’s have that discussion and let’s not set agendas in advance.

Dodds asked:

Will the Prime Minister reiterate, not just on behalf of the Government, but speaking for the whole House I believe, the unconditional and unequivocal support of the British people for the people of the Falkland Islands and their right—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”]—their inalienable and British-held right to self-determination? Will he confirm that that will not be undermined in any way by some kind of accommodation or negotiation in which the people of the Falkland Islands may have an enormous say, but have no veto? They should have a right to determine their own future.

The Conservative side of the House roared its approval, furious with itself for failing to ask that question. Cameron rose to the occasion, as Corbyn hugged his right arm defensively:

The right hon. Gentleman has put it better than I ever could. The people of the Falkland Islands spoke as clearly as they possibly could in the referendum. They want to maintain the status quo. As long as they want that, they will have it guaranteed from me. I find it quite extraordinary that the Labour party wants to look at changing the status and giving away something people absolutely consider to be their right. That will never happen as long as I am in Downing Street.

Let us just remind ourselves what Michael Foot said when the Argentinians seized the islands in 1982:

The rights and the circumstances of the people in the Falkland Islands must be uppermost in our minds. There is no question in the Falkland Islands of any colonial dependence or anything of the sort. It is a question of people who wish to be associated with this country and who have built their whole lives on the basis of association with this country. We have a moral duty, a political duty and every other kind of duty to ensure that that is sustained.

The people of the Falkland Islands have the absolute right to look to us at this moment of their desperate plight, just as they have looked to us over the past 150 years ...

Even though the position and the circumstances of the people who live in the Falkland Islands are uppermost in our minds—it would be outrageous if that were not the case—there is the longer-term interest to ensure that foul and brutal aggression does not succeed in our world. If it does, there will be a danger not merely to the Falkland Islands, but to people all over this dangerous planet.

• And finally, thanks to Moose Allain ‏for this:

"Guys! Guys, guys, guys! I've finally thought of a name for the tent strings!"