Today was a red letter one! About 250 children, or young adults might be more appropriate, poured into the House of Lords Chamber to debate the burning issues of their world. These included the media treatment of the young, the ubiquity of the celebrity culture and whether current education was fit for purpose, an unscheduled…
The House of Lords Appointments Commission (www.lordsappointments.gov.uk) not only selects, according to increasingly strict criteria, those who are recommended for life peerages but, crucially, has the duty to vet all party political nominees for propriety. (Remember the cash-for-peerages affair some two years ago?) The checks for these potential peers includes the following sentence: to ensure…
Sadly, Viscount Bledisloe, an eminent barrister, died on 12 May. Since he was a hereditary peer, a by-election follows automatically. This is a formal affair involving the Electoral Reform Services and a set of rules instituted during the 1999 House of Lords reforms. There are 29 hereditary peers among the 200-odd crossbenchers and all these…
I have just returned from a lightning visit to Afghanistan to see the school I have been supporting for almost 10 years. I will write more about it in time but this is a quick note to record a (to me extraordinary) co-incidence. I have blogged about the setting up of this school which has 50%…
Last Wednesday a small group of us went in the early morning to the Whitechapel Gallery to see some paintings and sculpture of artists who had been supported by the British Council and whose work now formed part of the BC’s collection. Very sensibly, we focussed on just a few, for example an early Henry Moore sculpture and…
