This evening we are to have a “dinner hour debate” to discuss the 2014 anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War. At the time of writing there are 23 Peers on the Speakers List. Once the mover of the motion and the Minister replying have taken their allocation of some 20 minutes the rest of us will be lucky to get two minutes to cram in whatever we want to say about the calamitous results of unbridled nationalism in Europe a century ago.
Occasionally it is claimed that the House of Lords is “self-regulating”. This is patent nonsense. The Government and Labour Whips fix almost everything through the “Usual Channels.” If the interests of the whole House were paramount a way would be found to extend a debate like this, when so many Members on all sides wish to participate.
The Procedure Committee and Leader of the House are supposedly examining the merits of a new committee of Backbenchers who would allocate a little of the debating time of the House to reflect such interest. It is now nearly two years since the Goodlad Committee recommended something along these lines. Time for action perhaps?
Or just axe the Lords.
Gordian knot – problem solved.
Self regulating in that the whips of the largest party do the regulating.
Lord Tyler should have stayed in the other place, with respect.
I am just writing up on the WW1 battlefields to be found on the Via Romea, the Road to Rome, along which I shall soon journey; peace loving tyke that I am, I should have prefered to go up the Loire to Longres, Roman town ,rather than across the Straits of Dover, and through the battle fields, but there I am!
Bapaume, Albert, Somme.
I know what! Let’s discuss it here!
Please, you need far more Peoples-Needs-Centered grounds for a backbencher committee than the 2014 anniversary of the outbreak of WW1.
It is a serious challenge, that the British establishment, governance, judiciary and civil-service classes are lifestyle-inefficient and longterm unsustainworthy, drawing and giving each other as they do from the Common Purse many more sufficient-human-livings-each than the one any human being in fact truly needs;
therefore none of your Houses can be relied upon to be sustainworthily either ‘self-regulating’ or ‘nation-regulating’; your class is in a real sense terminally-heavily compromised.
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Let us not take names in vain, either: World War 1 “debating” for instance:
Look, please: WW1 was nearly 100 years ago and still there are many outstanding unsettled cases, of unrecognised heroism and of wrongful-execution-for-‘desertion’. ;
then in WW2 our sailors earned valourous and dangerous-service awards running the Nazi Kriegsmarina and Luftwaffe “killing-gauntlets” across the North Sea and in Arctic waters.
One survivor, of both the War and of the neglect of Britain to provide both rehabilitation and do-able employment, with whom I was sharing ‘learn-a-new-trade’ training time at St Loyes College in 1969, told us that one convoy he sailed in started out from Britain with over 200 ships (two hundred) but less than 50 (fifty) got back safely.
For 70 years such valiants have been snubbed, and denied even the award of those few pennyworths of actual medals;
whilst their (and our) super-empowered, wealthy, elitely-educated, and outstandingly ‘life-experienced’ leaders and governors do – what ?
“Debate”
(and endlessly allow Necessities for People to slip through the cracks in the timeframes, tables, and floorboards of ‘British Democracy’)
until “we win – you lose”.