People continue to reach us by typing in some interesting terms into the search engines. Some are clearly related to the House of Lords; others not obviously so. Some of the ones related to the House have included in recent days ‘how many Chinese members are there?’ (answer: at least one, Baroness Dunn from Hong Kong); ‘life peers have to be Christians’ (no they don’t: a good number of peers affirm rather than take the oath); and ‘how do the Bishops vote in the House of Lords?’ (the answer is occasionally and often in different lobbies).
I am not quite sure, however, why someone who typed in ‘how to weigh a pa 32 aircraft’ reached the site! Likewise with someone who typed in ‘adam boulton mp fanciable’. Adam Boulton is not an MP. As for whether he is fanciable or not, I leave that to others. It is not the sort of thing we discuss much in the Lords.
A little bored, I typed in the search terms you gave. The Adam Boulton one is straightforward – a certain Lord Norton posted an article here on February 14.
Not sure about the aircraft one, perhaps from a post here by Lord Soley on May 24. There is aircraft engineering manufacturer called Lord, supplier of parts for the Piper PA-32. Can’t explain the ‘how to weigh’ bit, other than someone has a model aircraft of a PA-32 and needs to weigh it to know how much power he’ll need to get it in the air.
Did the search come from the US? If so, there is a model aircraft club site whose owner has a book succinctly called “Lords of the Crescent: How did man obtain his modern technology in a short ten thousand years – did he have help? If so from whom?” We are assured it is a scientific historical novel, by Thomas E Fairbairn.
Matron’s calling me away, have to dash.
ladytizzy: I don’t recall discussing whether Adam Boulton was fanciable or not! On aircraft, perhaps I should persuade one of my colleagues who actually builds and flies light aircraft to contribute to the blog.
Search engines pick out posts that contain all the words or terms. Your post of February contained ‘fanciable’ and ‘MPs’ (they automatically truncate and elongate terms such as MPs to MP and include them in the search). ‘Adam’ and ‘Boulton’ appear on your Blogroll, thus was picked up regardless of the order of the words searched.
Try typing in: Chinese Christians lobbies fanciable slugger Boris
You should find this post at the top of the list!
Search engines offer an Advanced Search facility where you can ask to find the exact phrase, or you can simply enclose the phrase with double quotes.
I look forward to the answer on the riddle of the aircraft from your colleague.
Lord Norton,
You are showing your ignorance of cultural matters of grave national importance… But seriously, I thought you had already covered this?
Adam Boulton is certainly not an MP and he may or may not be fanciable – this is not the point. He DID run a poll, some way back if I recall, of the ‘most fanciable MP’ [both male and female, if I recall correctly] and it was a bandwagon jumped on with gay abandon by many bloggers, not least Iain Dale. Here is a smidgin to whet your appetite.
http://adamboulton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/02/2007_top_10_mos.html
Maybe you are still upset that no-one has thought to start a ‘most fanciable Peer’ contest ? Why not start your own ? After all this is the only characteristic which many judge their politicians by…
But I think you would have to exclude the Lord Speaker, both on grounds of impartiality, and that the result might be a forgone conclusion.
Toodle-pip.
BG
I am all for a most fanciable Lords poll – I have in mind who I would nominate….
ladytizzy and Bedd Gelert: I was being somewhat flippant. (I know, most unusual.) I know why the search term found the earlier post; I was more interested in the actual choice and order of the words used.
As for coming back to having a most fanciable peer contest, I have a sneaking suspicion this may not fly. However, I am happy to be proved wrong. I think.