In my Stevenson Lecture at the University of Glasgow in January, I addressed the claim that election of a second chamber necessarily constitutes the ‘democratic’ option. This is often advanced by proponents of an elected second chamber as if it were self-evidently correct. I argued that it is not necessarily the democratic option, a point to…
The House of Lords has members who are appointed because of their eminence in their chosen fields. Some are well-known public figures, such as Robert Winston, Michael Grade, Melvyn Bragg, Joan Bakewell, Alan Sugar and Andrew Lloyd-Webber. However, some have family members who are even better known than they are. This week’s quiz is therefore devoted to identifying…
I was unable to attend the statement in the Lords yesterday. Initially the decision was to recall the commons but not the Lords. This changed on Wednesday but I was on a Scottish island visiting a neolithic tomb – no sign of riots there! My very brief thoughts on the rioting so far are that…
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…
Tomorrow’s recall of the House of Lords will be the first for nearly a decade. We were last recalled in 2002, though in that year it occurred on two occasions: on 3 April for tributes to Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and on 24 September to discuss Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. The preceding…
Maybe we can afford both, and the British public is certainly generous when faced with famine and disaster overseas. But we really urgently need a fund to restore a business and a home to those innocents who have lost everything due to the riots of the last few days. Insurance is bound to be insufficient. If we…
The House of Lords has a long history, having íts origins in the kings’s court that preceded the summoning of knights of the shires to court. For this quiz, I thought I would pose some historical questions. Feel free to have a guess if not too sure. As usual, the first two readers to supply the…
My experience over more than 30 years in Northern Ireland convinces me that finding our common humanity is the key to peace. As they say, blood is the same colour whatever your race of creed. Personal or group identity is, however, highly important for most people. We have seen this very clearly in the conflicts…
Mark D’Arcy of BBC Parliament blogs that he thinks that it has been a good year for Parliament. One can see his argument. The chairs and members of select committees in the Commons are now elected, the committees have continued to be productive, and two have recently gained a high public profile because of the ‘phone-hacking…
