Lord Tyler’s post reminds me of the occasion when I gave a talk on Parliament to politics students at St Peter’s School in York. At the end of the talk, I was presented with a framed portrait of the school’s most famous old boy – Guido Fawkes! I spoke again at the school earlier this year. …
On behalf of the Lord Speaker I visited Dauntsey’s School, near Devizes in Wiltshire, at the end of last week. Invited many months ago I rashly suggested that “Bring Back Guy Fawkes?” was a suitable November discussion-starter for Year 12/13, but that I would tread more delicately with a theme for the later lecture of…
A couple of weekend quiz questions. In an earlier post, I asked readers if they could name members of the Lords who had won medals in Olympic Games. The two most obvious names were quickly offered: Lord Coe (Seb Coe) a multiple Gold medallist in athletics and Lord Moynihan (Colin Moynihan) a Silver medallist in rowing. However, the…
Sometimes one’s speech in debate doesn’t quite go according to plan. On Tuesday afternoon 17 November, Lord Warner had raised a short debate on the Charter for Dying Well produced by the organisation Dignity in Dying http://www.dignityindying.org.uk. The Charter contained much that everyone could agree with but also included a call for the legalisation of the…
I was in a meeting in the Lords last week when someone referred to Westminster as ‘the mother of Parliaments’. It is not uncommon to hear such a reference. However, the 19th Century politician John Bright, who coined the phrase ‘the mother of Parliaments’, was not referring to Westminster. What he said, in a speech…
