Taking one final week in Italy before returning to the parliamentary fray next week. One delightful consequence of this blog was I was contacted by Charles Young, the author of ‘Impunity’ the new book about Berlusconi, after he saw my blog reference a few weeks ago http://lordsoftheblog.net/2010/08/03o. It turns out he and his wife have…
In different ways, this week has been devoted to disseminating information about the House of Lords as well as British politics and legislatures more generally. I was in Westminster at the beginning of the week – and again struck by how many MPs and peers were working within the Palace. I was there partly to discuss arrangements for the…
Most parliamentarians probably chose to hear the Pope speak at the event in Westminster Hall on Friday 17th. I thought this gathering would be too large and went instead to an interreligious meeting to hear him speak at St Mary’s College Twickenham. There were politicians and business people in the audience too, of not more than about 100. His…
Lord Norton mentioned in a recent blog that we carry on working even when the House is in recess. This week I attended an interesting policy meeting at the Department of Health with the new Minister for Care Services Paul Burstow MP, who has taken over the Chair of the Ministerial Advisory Group on Research…
Given that the Pope has been visiting Westminster, speaking yesterday in Westminster Hall, I thought it appropriate for this week’s quiz to have a religious theme. There are peers drawn from a wide range of religions and of none (there is an active humanist group in the House). As usual, the first two readers to supply the…
The House of Commons was sitting last week and again this week. It has been busy with the Second Readings of the Government’s two major constitutional measures (the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill and the Fixed-Term Parliaments Bill). The House of Lords is not sitting, but the fact that MPs are in session has…
Congratulations to Robin and Dave H, who are the winners of last week’s quiz. They each identified a total of seventeen former Cabinet ministers, no longer in the Commons, who are not members of the Lords. This week’s quiz relates to the background of members. Even when the Lords Temporal were all hereditary peers, not…
Over the past few decades, Parliament has become a much more open institution and has sought to enhance its links with citizens. There is already a substantial flow of correspondence between constituents and MPs – and the volume has grown substantially in recent years – but there have been problems at the institutional level. How…
Lady Tizzy raised a serious point of frustration reently about the payment barriers that scientific and other academic journals put up to block access to research. It’s a fascinating issue because the research publishing world is changing and almost everyone wants to see research freely available to a wide audience. But publishing peer reviewed papers…
