Like last week’s, this week’s quiz relates to the membership of the House. As usual the first two readers to supply the correct answers will be the winners.
1. Why will there shortly be the potential for sibling rivalry in the House of Lords?
2. The chairs of the departmental select committees in the House of Commons have just been elected. One of the chairs is the spouse of a member of the House of Lords. Who is the MP’s spouse?
3. Which minister in the House of Lords is the father-in-law of a member of the Cabinet?
Ah! The nepotism quiz! 🙂
Lord Blagger.
Lord Blagger: You will doubtless be interested to know that next week’s quiz will be related to popular culture. Readers may need to start brushing up on their knowledge of leading soaps.
1) Because an existing member’s sibling will soon be joining the House of Lords!
2) Baroness Maddock (‘Mrs’ Sir Alan Beith)
3) Lord Howell (George Osbo.’s father-in-law)
Proper answer to 1) Lord Chadlington (John Gummer’s brother)
1. Because of John Selwyn Gummer’s peerage in the dissolution honours (his brother Peter – Lord Chadlington – having been made a working peer some years ago).
2. Baroness Maddock
3. Lord Howell
1. John Gummer will shortly be joining his brother, Lord Chadlington in the House of Lords.
2. The Baroness Maddock (married to Sir Alan Beith MP – Chairman of the Justice SC).
3. Lord Howell (father-in-law of George Osborne).
1. This time the three questions faintly have a more genericly-social feel of ‘fairness versus family-interest’ about them; which the ordinary pre-GCSE-level citizen(comprehension-wise, not historical-time-) might feel him/her-self to be vaguely intuiting with a ripple of dangling constern.
2. ‘Constern’, my lord, because the feeling feels deeper than simple ‘unease’; and ‘dangling’ because one feels lost as if in mid-air, or as it were with only one foot on the ground, and without a capacity to take command of oneself nor to cry ‘help!’.
We lower people are having exhausting difficulties finding answers to such questions; and when one answers the Parliament Education call to use their new animated timeline ‘Houses of History’ one finds it seems to be accessible only to those who have paid a membership fee or are qualified teachers in a registered school.
3. Affordable, at-one’s-shoulder one-on-one citizenship-level tutors are also almost impossible to find within hobbling-distance of one’s own neighbourhood, my lord.
4. I have reason to believe, however, that in the personally individual case of a very few low-income local citizens (including myself by axi or sometimes by taxes-prepaid-bus-pass) a unique participatory-democratisation and adult-impairee-education blessing exists in the UK, in that Plymouth is reportedly the only local-government area in England to have both a two-man computer technical and tutoring team, and two small community centres, able and willing to affordably bring together that technical-support-and-keyboard-tutelage team and us the needy citizenry.
5. My lords (and if you will please, ‘interested People’) since a non-profit, citizen-networking Blog site is now being built by this little ‘community’ in Plymouth, a visit to that effort via WordPress.com might be approve-able ?
Possibly, if one may make so bold, Parliament, the People (qua local-neighbourhoods and their empowered local-governments), and Education-authorities or able-and-willing adult-educational powers, (e.g. AgeUK,U3A,SureStart, Mind) could and should get together on such matters ?
Certainly our senior tutor is already being used in at least one matter of eGovernment, my lord; and in view of a probable rise of eDemocracy around the world this would appear to be a particularly ‘right time’ for the UK to make quite a large new combined-initiative, involving new public-spending (better say that again, New-Spending)rather than risking Cuts-collateral-damage such as might sever from both The People and the Governing-and-Educating authorities this one remaining local little English pocket of intelligently-progressive and participatorily-cooperative Democratisation, Community-Strengthening and, my lord, a last remaining Cinderella of Human Needs & Rights, Individual-Human-Dvelopment ?
One simply feels the LOTB Quiz to be an appropriate place to submit such a Matter of concern, my lord yet, since like the notional ‘lower’ citizen above this submissor also feels ‘dangling’, ‘one-foot-on-the-ground’ or even might he add ‘blind-in-the-land-of-the-one-eyed’, he begs to remain watchful, and quite ready to apologise whenever and wherever need be.
1)John Gummer is brother of Lord Chadlington
2)Lady Maddock (Alan Beith)
3) Howell of Guildford – Minister of State at the Foreign Office (Osborne)
Yep, the house of lords is a soap opera.
However, people don’t want to pay 115 million a year for it.
Lord Blagger: I think I will stick with survey data for finding out what people think as to the value of the Lords. The survey commissioned by the Constitution Unit at UCL was most revealing.
Congratulations to Chris K and JH who supllied the correct answers and in so doing got in ahead of Emmy and Croft. Former Cabinet minister John Gummer will shortly be introduced into the Lords, where his brother (Lord Chadlington) already sits. Baroness Maddock is married to Sir Alan Beith, chair of the Justice Committee in the House of Commons. Lord Howell of Guildford is the father-in-law of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Lord Blagger: Had it really been a nepotism quiz, it would have focused more on the Macmillan premiership!
I didn’t get round to entering the quiz this week.
For Q3, Viscount Astor came to mind, although I don’t think he’s a minister now. Would a stepfather-in-law count anyway?
Blagger’s doing good!
How dare he make such remarks about Nepotism!
My lord quizmaster Norton;
I havn’t a clue where to honestly find the asnwers to current quiz #1 and now #2; but it seems to be possible to crib from ‘the Audience’.
Therefore I beg to submit separately a number of educational thoughts, at least one of which may be quite pertinent to these engaging quizzes.
1.This time the three quiz questions have a faintly more generic social feel about them, perhaps of
“ ‘feasance-fairness versus family-interest’.
The ordinary pre-GCSE-level citizen (comprehension-wise, not historical-time wise) might be able to detect something ’suspicious’ there. One such might have a distinct feeling of unease, that firstly s/he has been excluded from enablements to make answer, and secondly that ‘hidden things are going-on up there’ (nepotism, for one),
But one dare not risk crying ‘foul’ nor even ‘help’.
2. We ’lower’ people are having exhausting difficulties finding answers to such questions; but when one answers the Parliament Education call to use their new animated ‘Houses of History’ timeline one finds it seems to be accessible only to those who have paid a membership fee or are qualified teachers in a registered school.
3. Affordable, at-one’s-shoulder, one-on-one citizenship-level tutors are also almost impossible to find, within hobbling-distance of one’s own neighbourhood.
4. There is reason in Plymouth to believe, however, that in the personally individual case of a very few low-income local citizens (including myself by taxi or sometimes by taxes-prepaid-bus-pass) a unique participatory-democratisation and adult-impairee-education place, with an embryo-enetwork also in place, not only exists in the UK but is affordably and achievably accessible.
Plymouth is one of a handful of local-government areas in England having both a two-man computer technical and tutoring team, and two small but essentially separate community centres, each sufficiently needy, willing and able to affordably bring such a person-oriented technical-support-and-keyboard-tutelage team together with us the needy-and-willing citizenry.
5. Since further a non-profit, citizen-networking Blog site is now being built by this little ‘community’ in Plymouth, a visit to that effort via WordPress.com might be approve-able ?
It is under the http://www.talkaboutlocal.com specificly http://www.talkaboutstbudo.wordpress.com .
6. Possibly Parliament, the People (qua local-neighbourhoods and their appropriately empowered Local-Governments), and Education-authorities or able-and-willing adult-educational powers, (e.g. AgeUK,U3A,SureStart, Mind) could and should get together on such matters ?
7. Certainly our senior leading computer tutor and engineer, is already being used in at least one matter of eGovernment, my lord, but is over-all very heavily overloaded (and therein underpaid too); which to me were i in Government would have long ago been a brightly flashing red ‘stop’-light.
In view of a probable rise of eDemocracy around the world the time would appear to be more than ripe for the UK to make quite a large new combined-initiative, involving new public-spending.
We need to say that again, New-Spending; rather than extinction by Cuts-collateral-damage.
Every level of the British People, and of the Governing-and-Educating authorities, need such isolated little local English pockets, of intelligently-progressive and participatorily-cooperative Democratisation, and of both Individual and Community strengthening.
8. This little ‘individual-and-neighbourhood-advancement/education’ pocket might easily be further enabled to plug into Individual-Human-Development, a second Cinderella-human-entity naturally linked to the above ‘neighbourhood’ development.
[Individual Human Development, my lord, has yet to be afforded its own Right and UN index formulation largely, one suspects, because all funds are being swallowed up by the very longstanding and ostensibly-successful HDI: [Longevity x Knowledge x Wealth] Aggregate Human Development Index ,updated regularly in the colourful UNDP Human Development Report.
9. There are more such thoughts; but also quite a goodly number of neglected, ‘yet-to-be-discovered’ educational advances such as “Perceptual Self-Control” WCT Powers), “Self-theorisation Theory (C.Dweck)”, “Wisdom of the Body Moving” (L. Hartley), “Six Thinking Hats” (Dr E. de Bono); “Leader Effectiveness Training” detailing the friendly Method III of win-win-win Cooperative Problem Solving (Dr T. Gordon) …
This is to name but a small handful of advances that could be accessed Educationally, and alternatively be learned-from even by the relatively uneducated ‘lone learner’.
One simply feels the LOTB Quiz to be an appropriate place, in the apparent absence of any other, to submit such questions of modern educational concern, my lord.