The Fabulous Fifties

Baroness Deech 10/02/2012 – 3:54 pm

I hope I may be allowed some nostalgia, prompted by the 60th anniversary of the death of King George VI on 6th February, and the forthcoming celebration of the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen, which will be marked, amongst many other events,  by the presentation of Addresses to her at Westminster by both Houses of Parliament. I was at primary school in south London when the King died, and as I walked home (in those days one walked half a mile to school and back twice a day, because lunch was made by mother) I saw the billboard outside the newsagent’s announcing “The King is Dead”.  It made a deep impression on us at school and we were well aware that there was to be a  momentous change in our world. 

For the death of the King, who was very well liked, also signified the end of the second world war period, with which he and the late Queen Mother were forever to be associated.  There were still bombed out houses in our part of the world, and ration books, but the Elizabethan age was about to dawn, and we knew it.  The early fifties were marked not only by a change of monarch (and how hard it was to get used to singing God Save the Queen in place of the King!) but by a new sense of modernity and the opening up of opportunities.  The queues for food seemed to diminish, houses were patched up, clothes became more colourful, and cars and TV began to appear (though not for us, and it really didn’t matter). The legacy of the Festival of Britain, just a year earlier, was a fantastic cultural life in London. It was all free: the British Museum, the art galleries, and the wonderful local library, where it was so exciting finally to be allowed to borrow books from the adult section, having worked one’s way through the children’s section. I travelled in the underground and on the buses frequently on my own at age 10 or so, and never experienced any difficulty.  The new welfare state was at its best: our eyes, hearing and teeth were checked at school, and we were well taken care of physically as well as intellectually.  My primary school knew that the 11+ was the route out and up, and so it proved.  

A holiday at Folkestone or on the Isle of Wight was all that one could possibly want, although I was fortunate in that my parents took me to the continent of Europe, by ferry, at an early age.  This helped me educationally, especially as it made me less self conscious when it came to speaking French than some other children who had never left England.    We gathered round the big wooden radio to listen to the Home Service and the Light Programme  - children’s hour, good plays, great comedy, Educating Archie, Music and Movement at school, 20 Questions, Jennings, Top of the Form - it all opened my eyes to the world beyond home.  I had a set of Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedia and I read The Children’s Newspaper, Girl comic, and Little Lulu comic, sent by a friend in the USA; my mother and I read Great Expectations as we sat by the coal fire. I had pen pals whom I never met, and went to Saturday morning children’s cinema and played hopscotch in the street.

We were all monarchists too: there was no reason not to be. I collected pictures of the young Princesses for my scrapbook and noted the new head on the stamps in my stamp album. The only unpleasantness I recall were the smogs caused by pollution, and having to walk to school unable to see more than a yard ahead.  Life was hard for the adults, especially the women, but to be a child in London when the Queen came to the throne was a privilege indeed. And how I have enjoyed writing this!

Written at 3:54 pm on 10/02/2012, by Baroness Deech

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The Facebook Prospectus

Lord Haskel 09/02/2012 – 11:43 am

Looking through the 186 pages of the Facebook prospectus provides an insight into the internet today.  Gone are the days when surfing the net was instructive, pleasurable and yes fun.  We believed in internet neutrality. When surfing today we have to bear in mind that what we look at and what we do on the internet  is being interpreted, packaged and sold.  And this includes the content and destination of our e-mails and blogs.  Our personal opinions and preferences.  The buyers are not only advertisers but also employers, credit agencies and public services.

This looking over your shoulder is an invasion of our privacy and European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding is working to give us the right to opt out of this data collection and have our personal data deleted.  Are we giving her enough support?  And if she is successful how will we know it has been done?  Both  more regulation and giving powers to Europe are unpopular with the government.  But the prospectus for this one company tells us what a huge task independent verification is  –  probably beyond  the capacity to enforce our existing data protection regulations and our privacy laws.

The search for data about us has become a major business battle ground and this prospectus tells us that it is an asset valued more highly than most other business assets.  This is why the value of Facebook’s shares is  estimated to be 50 billion pounds.  Google’s income from their data is greater than Facebook’s .

Another factor is that the collection and processing of this data is becoming cheaper and easier all the time.  So more companies will do it as it is so valuable.

All this raises questions of how the digital age is changing the way the economy works, how the democratic process works and our place in all of this.  This prospectus should stimulate Parliament to have another look at the internet because of the insights it provides.

Written at 11:43 am on 09/02/2012, by Lord Haskel

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Quiz – women peers

Lord Norton 04/02/2012 – 10:23 am

The membership of the House of Lords was extended to women in 1958.  This was forty years after women were able to be elected to the House of Commons.   Today, the proportion of women in the Lords is the same as that in the Commons, though women tend to be more prominent in leadership positions in the Lords.  This week’s quiz is on women in the House of Lords.  As usual, the first two readers to supply the correct answers will be the winners.

1.  I received my PhD from Harvard University and have been a professor of philosophy and principal of a Cambridge College.  I have served as President of the British Academy.  Who am I?

2. I come from a legal family.  I have served as a Lord Justice of Appeal and as President of the Family Division of the High Court.  I chaired a major child abuse inquiry.  Who am I?

3. I am a journalist and have been city and business editor of The Times and editor of The Sunday Telegraph. Who am I?

4. I am a broadcaster and writer, and have served as chair of the National Campaign for the Arts.  I am well known for appearing on and presenting television programmes.  I became a Dame in 2008 before later being elevated to the peerage.  Who am I?

Written at 10:23 am on 04/02/2012, by Lord Norton

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And when did you last see your father?

Baroness Deech 04/02/2012 – 8:25 am

There have been conflicting stories in the press this week about how and whether the government intends to change the law in order to ensure that both parents see more of their children after divorce.  Some reports said that there would be introduced a legal presumption of equally shared parenting; others that it would not go this far but that there would be encouragement of equal access, or visitation rights.

In the Family Justice Review 2011 the proposal that England adopt the shared parenting law as applied in Australia was rejected, because reports from Australia indicate that judges found it difficult to apply and divorce cases there were dominated by decisions about how much time each parent would be entitled to see the child. The Review concluded that the courts here should continue to apply the principle of the paramountcy of the welfare of the child.  It is often reported that 40% of children lose all contact with their fathers after divorce.  Lobby groups for separated and divorced fathers blame this on the law; other studies indicate that even where fathers are granted legal access, they simply fail to show up when the children are expecting a visit.  As the divorced fathers make a new relationship with another woman, who may have her own children, they distance themselves from their children of the earlier relationship. Wherever the blame lies, there is no doubt that children suffer from the loss of a father after divorce, and that over 100,000 children fall into this category every year. There are probably more because this takes no account of children affected by the breakup of parents who are not married but cohabiting or were always single.

This relates to my post Against my Will, where I repeated my objections to attempts to make the law of marriage apply to cohabitants who do not want to or cannot marry.  I heard recently of the growth of a new practice by men, nicknamed the “Hugh Grant” syndrome.  That is, they take care not to marry or live with the mother of their child, or girlfriend, because they fear that once married or cohabiting, their assets are vulnerable to the law and that a split will expose half of their property and income to transfer to the woman.  (It could be the other way round where the woman is wealthier than the man.) They see maintenance law as unfair and so uncertain that its application by lawyers will in itself cost thousands of pounds.  Maintenance law has become a field where women with well-off husbands seek someone to fund the litigation in return for a cut of the proceeds. This is a really bad result for the children involved.  The solution is not to apply the existing unfair and uncertain marriage law to cohabitants, but to simplify the existing law and make it fair to men and women in a society where women can and do earn a living and where, sadly, relationship breakdown is all too common and unsurprising.

Written at 8:25 am on 04/02/2012, by Baroness Deech

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The Financial Privilege Amendment

Baroness Murphy 02/02/2012 – 1:50 pm

Yesterday afternoon in the Commons, just before the debate on the Lords’ Amendments to the Welfare Reform Bill, the Speaker announced  “I must draw the House’s attention to the fact that financial privilege is involved in a substantial number of Lords amendments. If the House agrees to these amendments, I shall ensure that the appropriate entry is made in the Journal.” Thus the Government, by persuasion of the Speaker, ensured that the Lords would not be able to further discuss the provision of the Bill. The Lords’ amendments would have cost hundreds of millions of pounds. The Commons spent all afternoon systematically voting out all the Lords’ amendments.

Formally, as the Leader of the House Lord Strathclyde said in our chamber, “Matters for privilege are not a matter for the Government but a matter for the House of Commons and the Speaker of the House of Commons on advice from his clerks. The position of privilege has of course been jealously guarded by the House of Commons since 1671. It is well precedented and there is nothing unusual, although the second Chamber might always think that the Commons using financial privilege is a little unfair.” Just a year ago the Constitution Committee considered ‘Money Bills and Commons Financial Privilege’ (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201011/ldselect/ldconst/97/97.pdf) and concluded that in any reform of the House these privileges would need to be re-examined.

But of course the Leader’s statement did not fool anyone; the Clerks in the Commons would have been persuaded, and probably quite easily given the financial implications, of the merits of using the Financial Privilege to scupper further delay by the Lords. There was considerable anger in our chamber yesterday afternoon about this decision. Personally I felt the use of the Privilege was unnecessary, the Lords usually agrees to abide by the elected Commons’ decisions after one bout of Ping Pong. But Cameron must have known that the press and public were largely on the Government’s side. Quite what rump of the bill will return to the Lords for discussion is a mystery although apparently something will appear next week.

I shall be abroad for the next two weeks and miss the excitement of the return of the Health Bill. I’ll catch up with it on Day 3 of Report Stage. Lord Owen is plotting rather noisily against almost all the Bill’s provisions and the Minister Earl Howe has tabled a myriad set of new amendments for the Government which take account of our discussions in committee. At least we know that the Government can’t throw out discussions about the Health Bill on the basis of financial privilege since few have financial implications.

 

 

Written at 1:50 pm on 02/02/2012, by Baroness Murphy

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