A week to go before the House reconvenes and it promises to be a sticky time before the new Session begins after the Queen’s Speech on 18 November. Before plunging into the hurly-burly of bills and amendments and committees and debates, not to mention the results of the current reviews on parliamentary expenses, let me just finish…
I’m just back home after a few days in Dublin, where the excitement of the referendum vote on the Lisbon Treaty was at its height on Thursday, a foregone conclusion on Friday after the exit poles and something of a puzzle by Saturday. The lamp posts were covered in placards bearing cryptic and irrelevant sound…
This week’s quiz questions. The first two to respond with the correct answers will be the winners. We now have a total of three grand prize-winners. It will be interesting to see how soon we have a fourth. 1. Two ministerial resignations were announced at the same time in 2003 over the issue of war…
One might ask, what does a Lord know about fashion? Apart from wearing an ermine gown once a year at state openings, I have two teenage girls with modeling experience. London fashion week is an economic booster, raking in million of pounds for the economy. It also is a strong source of influence. It states,…
This morning, the new Justices of the Supreme Court were sworn in at the Supreme Court building (formerly Middlesex Guildhall) in Parliament Square. Shortly afterwards, they were back in the Palace of Westminster. To mark the start of the legal year, judges attend a service in Westminster Abbey and then process across to the Palace…
Like many, possibly all, parliamentarians, I receive a regular e-mail circular from Peter Tatchell. As may be expected, I don’t always agree with what he says, but he often raises important issues and, like a number of my Conservative colleagues, I admire his tenacity and read what he has to say. Until I got one of…
Amidst all the fuss about the Attorney General and her housekeeper, her recent role in helping to dissuade Gordon Brown from reforming her office has gone unremarked. In July 2007, the incoming Prime Minister indicated that he planned to detach the Attorney’s core responsibility as top legal adviser from day-to-day politics (“The role of Attorney…
Having received some very good responses to the question about drugs, I shall be interested to see if we attract a similar level of responses regarding our divorce laws. High profile divorce cases variously raise the issue of whether our divore laws are fair. There are problems with generalising from specific cases. However, according to recent…
We now have two grand prize-winners (Chris K. and Jonathan). It will be interesting to see how soon we have a third. With this week’s quiz, the first two readers to supply the correct answers will be the winners. Question 1 1. I am a distinguished historian. 2. I have been a university vice-chancellor. 3.…
