Iain Dale in his blog has, like last year, invited nominations for the most fanciable political journalist. However, on this occasion he has added a new category: ” Last Valentine’ Day, I caused a minor stir in the press lobby by compiling Top 20 Fanciable Journalists list a Top 20 Fanciable Journalists list in response…
Are we supposed to be enjoying ourselves? Work can be tedious, boring, irritating and frustrating but sometimes one has a pretty good day when a mixed agenda of interests inside and outside of the Lords is highly enjoyable. Yesterday I started the day working on a student appeal against termination of registration at St George’s,…
The photograph was taken shortly after 8.00 a.m. this morning, with the Palace bathed in sunlight. It is a remarkable contrast with the same time last week. I have a two-mile walk in to the Palace and on that occasion the pavements were covered in thick ice for virtually the whole of the journey. Given that I…
Baroness Murphy mentions that there were behind the scenes discussions concerning the Henry VIII powers embodied in the Banking Bill. I can confirm that there were, as I was involved in them. The Constitution Committee published a report drawing attention to the Henry VIII powers embodied in the Bill. Though recognising there were occasions when…
Sometimes the language of the House is obscure if not downright misleading. Yesterday there was much talk of a “Henry VIII clause” in the Banking Bill, which was having its Third Reading yesterday afternoon. It was expected we would vote on it…was it about how many wives a peer can have? Turned out not. A Henry…
The House sat yesterday to discuss developments in Gaza. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the debate had been postponed from an earlier date because of the large number of peers who have signed up to speak. A Friday sitting was arranged in order to enable a full debate to take place. There were…
For this weekend’s quiz, a couple of peers to identify: Peer 1 I have served as Chair of the Inner London Juvenile Court; I have served as Deputy Chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission; I have chaired the Broadcasting Standards Commission. Who am I? Peer 2: I served for many years as an administrator in…
Carol Thatcher, reality TV star and daughter of the former PM, has been in the news this week! In the Green Room at the BBC, she apparently referred to a French tennis player as a ‘golliwog’. This was in the presence of presenters and the production crew. It is claimed that she failed to apologise…
The report of the Constitution Committee on Surveillance: Citizens and the State has now been published. A HTML version can be read here. It has attracted considerable media attention: it is the lead story in The Guardian and has been widely covered by the broadcast media, including the BBC. Given that the committee deals with…
