Do please feel free to contribute, if you have not already done so, to the question from last week (the most admired peer); there have been some extremely interesting, and varied, replies. Here’s this weekend’s questions. Peer 1 I started my career as a housing administrator. I was director of a alcohol recovery programme and…
When does a Blogger, talking about himself, turn into an Inquisitor asking lots of questions? That is what I want to become. The Lords Information Committee, of which I am the proud chairman, is starting an inquiry this week in which we want to find out your thoughts about Parliament in general and the House…
Lords of the Blog is now one year old. Today marks the start of our second year. However, we are a mere stripling compared with the Official Report (Hansard). It is celebrating its 100th birthday as an official publication. Some form of report of parliamentary debates was published from 1803 onwards, but they were not…
Last Thursday the House of Lords (Members’ Taxation Status) Bill reached Committee stage in the Chamber of the House. Briefly the Bill, tabled by a LibDem peer, seeks to ensure that those peers who sit in the House must be registered to pay UK tax and therefore resisdent in the UK. It doesn’t take a…
Here’s a question (or rather two questions) for all our readers. Who is the member of the House of Lords that you most admire? And why? I thought this would be an interesting question to pose as it is one that anyone with some knowledge of the Lords – presumably most if not all of our readers…
Here’s the usual weekend quiz questions. I plan shortly to post a more general question which I hope will attract responses from a great many readers. Peer 1 I was educated in Glasgow and London. I am a distinguished surgeon and was professor of surgery at Guy’s Hospital. I spend my summers undertaking surgery on…
If Ed Balls was a student, I would fail him. His career as Schools Secretary has been stained with the SATS marking fiasco and questionable education standards. Recently, after a huge amount of stress to pupils, parents and teachers, SATS were abandoned overnight because the Government were unable to devise a suitable marking system. …
Lord Norton has mentioned the Bills before the House yesterday. I have been wrestling in my mind with Lord Lester’s private member’s Cohabitation Bill introduced yesterday but was unfortunately unable to speak. Normally I count myself as a ‘liberal’. I’m also an enduring fan of Lord Lester of Herne Hill and have found myself supporting most…
The House will have a Friday sitting tomorrow to consider Private Members’ Bills. Lord Ashley of Stoke is moving the Second Reading of his Disabled Persons (Independent Living) Bill. The measure is designed to give rights to disabled persons to enable them to live as independently as possible. Lord Lester of Herne Hill is moving…
