As Lord Soley asked who was the Prime Minister who was not British-born, I thought I would stick with the theme for this week’s quiz and ask about Prime Ministers in relation to the House of Lords. As usual, the first two readers to supply the correct answers will be the winners, though feel free…
Anticipating the sequence of bank holidays has created a demob happy atmosphere in the Lords. Not an acceptance that life peers will soon be gone after the Coaltiion’s package of Lords reform, but a more temporary jollity. I came in to my office to find two e-mails, one inviting me to a session of Lords…
I’m sorry but I think those people in the US who wanted to see Mr Obama’s passport are suffering from barely repressed racist attitudes – they can’t get use to the idea that someone of non-European ethnicity can become President. Well he did – good! Secondly why so much concern about original birth place anyway?…
Lord Bates is away from the office at the moment. He has begun a 2,000-mile walk from Mount Olympus in Greece to London in order to highlight the campaign for an Olympic Truce during London 2012. As regular readers will know, this is something to which he is strongly committed. His trip is self-financed and…
The Report of the Leader’s Group on the Working Practices of the House was published today. You can see the announcement and link to the report here.
In relation to gagging orders, which apparently protect the rich and famous from the consequence of their misdeeds, there seems to be agreement that it is up to Parliament to act to restrain their use. But this misses the point. At the core of the judgments given by the courts lies the Human Rights Act. …
The Times carried a substantial article last Friday on Portugal’s approach to drugs. The Portuguese experience has been held up as a possible model for others to follow. The article, by Chris Smyth, identifies the statistics that appear to bear out the aims of the reform. Since the policy was introduced ten years ago, drug use among the…
Taking up Lord Norton’s recent blog, I have enormous sympathy with the desire to slow down or stop the appointment of new peers; there are already far too many of us and there simply isn’t enough space. But stopping appointments seems to me the wrong way to go about reducing the numbers. Far better to…
I revert to reconsideration of the unfortunate situation we are in, with widespread reports of two new appointments of judges to the Supreme Court having been decided on, but not officially announced. The Law Lords used to sit in the House, but now they are called Justices of the Supreme Court and have their own building…
