For those who are interested in the arguments for intervention (not just military) and the history of intervention back to the 19th century British campaign to end the trans Atlantic slave trade look at my article written for the Henry Jackson Society: http://www.henryjacksonsociety.org/cms/harriercollectionitems/The+Right+Side+of+History.pdf
I and other bloggers attended a reception this evening – held in the River Room of the House of Lords, courtesy of the Lord Speaker – to mark the third birthday of Lords of the Blog. We welcomed many of you who comment regularly on the blog and were free to join us. Apart from hearing…
I shall be participating in a “Prayer to Annul” debate this evening. This weird wording means a debate raised to protest against a negative statutory instrument. Under the standard negative procedure, the SI is annulled if the prayer motion is agreed by the House within 40 days of the SI being laid. Lord Kirkwood of…
I took the opportunity of the February Recess to pay a fascinating first visit to India. So many impressions, but only room for one here: quite apart from our success in tracking down some family connections, I was struck by the resilience of the English language – often in a delightfully dated form. My daily…
Apart from drawing considerable satisfaction from the thoughtful exchanges below on nuclear power and the Japanese Tsunami I am struck by how different (and better) the debate is then it would have been some years ago. The people and the media in Japan are handling this much better than the media here where even the…
I was listening to Lord McKenzie of Luton explaining his second amendment in the National Insurance Contributions Bill today…he has a lovely soothing manner and always speaks plainly and well (although Lord Newby from the Lib Dems rather took the wind out of his sails and the amendment was lost at the vote). But Lord…
The tragic events in Japan reveal a remarkably stoic people who are much closer to dramatic natural disasters then I hope we shall ever be but I hope the nuclear issue does not lead to another attempt to stop the development of nuclear power in the UK. If we had a smaller world population it might be…
A lively and entertaining mini debate took place today on the Administration and Works Committee Report dealing with the use of electronic devices in the House. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201011/ldselect/ldaccwks/92/9202.htm We have agreed to allow limited use in the Chamber of certain hand held electronic devices but we are not to be allowed to use a search engine to…
I asked a question about antisemitism on Thursday. There is an upward trend in antisemitic incidents in the UK. For 2010 the Community Security Trust recorded 639 incidents, the second highest annual total since records began in 1984. This follows a record high of 926 in 2009, mainly due to extreme reactions to the Gaza…
