The House of Lords Information Office produces some excellent publications. They include The Work of the House of Lords. More recently, the Office has produced A Guide to Business. I take copies when I speak to a number of groups about the House and how it operates. It is a well presented, succinct introduction written in an accessible style.
For anyone wishing to find out more about how the House works, I commend it as an invaluable introduction. I would welcome comments. It may also bear close examination in preparation for this weekend’s quiz questions.
The coverage and content as such seems everything that might be expected. I do have a few thoughts on presentation though. The pictures display a lot of compression artefacts – a problem in all the parliamentary publications. There may have been an executive decision to hold the document size to 1.4MB but for online viewing – though not paper – this results in really poor picture quality. Even a slight increase in the file size, allowing a reduction in the compression level, would cure most of that problem. With an increasingly broadband UK file size ought not to be an issue. If you can’t increase the file size for the above reason then fewer or slightly smaller picture sizes could help to some extent but would be retrograde.
The section on the crossbenchers seems very short and not really to explain who/what they are and why they can be significant.
Somewhat subjectively but I do think they might have managed in one of the photos to include some of the younger members!
Croft: I am conscious that in terms of picture quality the online version is not as good as the printed version. I will see if that can be addressed. The printed version is, in my view, extremely attractive. There is relatively little on the cross-benchers, but that applies also to the party groups: I presume this is partly for reasons of space and because it is principally a guide to the business of the House. Some of the younger members of the House are shown in some of the pictures, but they are not that distinct in the online version. I agree that this is a shame. I speak as one of the younger members.
There is always a tension between online and print versions of any document as improving one can be detrimental to the other. It depends if the document, when designed, was intended to be dual purpose or was actually a printable online document/paper document accessible online. No doubt the weblogs will have a record of #s of downloads of such files to give an idea of which is more important.
I always think of the XB peers because I assume most people even with the vaguest of political knowledge have a concept of Lab -v- Con as part of the process but probably none of the XBs.
Compared to Lord Glenamara or Carington you are certainly a younger member!
Croft: I am a younger than most members of the House!
By as clear 10 years if the average age figures on the parliament site are up to date. A spry young thing 🙂