Category Archives: Lord Knight

Taxi for the Government Chief Whip!

Lord Knight 28/03/2012 – 5:49 pm

Sorry, but just ocassionally I need to have a bit of a moan. Parliamentarians aren't supposed to complain, it is our job to listen and respond to other people's complaints. And anyway we're alright so what have we got to moan about. Despite all that, like everyone else, I sometimes want to sound off about the stupid way they do things at work.Last night at 23.53 we started, yes started, a secon […]

Teaching for Teach First

Lord Knight 14/03/2012 – 1:37 pm

Yesterday morning I turned up at Westfield Community Technology College in Watford to teach Year 10 English. The school is a non-selective secondary school, in the partially selective environment of South Hertfordshire. First impression was that the school building investment programme that is now running six months late is still desperately needed in areas like Watford. I had volunteered to te […]

A scarred generation.

Lord Knight 17/11/2011 – 5:37 pm

Yesterday was a depressing day on the economy. Unlike the constant gloom from the Eurozone, the latest unemployment figures felt very immediate and close to home. An extra 63,000 unemployed young people aged 18-25 was a worse increase than I had feared and raises the worries that once again we will have a generation scarred by long term unemployment.I was able to take my anger to the Lords chamb […]

New Deal on the Economy?

Lord Knight 31/10/2011 – 11:30 am

Last Thursday in the Lords I led a debate on the the Impact of Government policy on Family Budgets. It was a good debate although it would have been nice to hear from some other benches than the Labour ones, but second debates on a Thursday afternoon are often not popular.When I was winding up the debate at the end I made Lord Sassoon on offer. I said: The Minister started off his comments by sa […]

Parliament should now focus the rest of this session on the economic and social crises

Lord Knight 11/08/2011 – 5:16 pm

The recall of Parliament today went better than I expected. In the Lords I think the questions on public disorder were measured and appropriate, and the tone continued that set in the Commons by David Cameron and Ed Miliband in avoiding political rancour. Today was the day for standing shoulder to shoulder against criminality, for being clear that there is no excuse for that criminality, and for […]